Playmarket Announces Cash Prize For Adam New Zealand Play Award

This is the third year of Playmarket's annual award, open to any new unproduced New Zealand play. They have announced that thanks to the generosity of the Adam Foundation, they are now able to offer a cash prize of $5000 to the winner, along with a professional public reading of one of the shortlisted plays at Circa Theatre, produced by Circa and Playmarket; followed by a celebratory function! The award, previously the Playmarket New Play Award,  will now be known as the Adam New Zealand Play Award.

The deadline for submissions for the 2010 awards is December 4th, 2009.  Please note that submissions should be emailed, and MUST include page numbers, a brief synopsis and a list of characters. The winner(s) will be announced by the end of March 2010.

As well as the overall winner, the following categories will be recognized:-

The Best Play by a Maori Playwright:   Starting this year, there will now be a special prize for the best play submitted by a Maori Playwright (please indicate with your submission if you wish to be considered for this prize). They offer a reading, and production assistance as appropriate.  Playmarket is currently seeking a sponsor for this prize.

The Best Play by a Woman Playwright:   The best play submitted by a woman will also be eligible for submission to The Play Press as their entry for the annual Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (submissions by invitation only; www.blackburnprize.org)  As only a third of Playmarket's clients are women, they hope this will encourage a few more to get serious!

The Best Play by an Auckland Playwright:   In addition the best Auckland submission to the award will receive development support and a performance opportunity at the PumpHouse Theatre during February 2010.

Take this opportunity to have your play read by industry professionals, and get it on the Playmarket radar.

Send all submissions and enquiries to Jean, scripts@playmarket.org.nz.

Past Winners

The 53rd Victim by Pip Hall won Playmarket's 2009 New Play Award, from a very strong field. The 53rd Victim, and Sketch by Wellington playwright Kate Morris were also selected to be given rehearsed public readings as part of the Aotearoa Playwrights Conference NEW WRITING / NEW PRODUCING Forum at the Auckland Festival.

The winner in 2008 was Ninna Tersman, whose play f-ing Parasites was workshopped in London, directed by Lorae Parry with script advisor Tanika Gupta. Its premiere took place at the Alcyone Festival in Chicago in 2009.

Playmarket is trying to encourage playwrights to banish all self censoring, all worries about 'what theatres want', what is affordable, what they think audiences want to see.  They want you to trust your instincts and really push your play in exactly the direction YOU want it to go.  Be as irresponsible as you like - anything goes.

Playmarket would like to encourage you to imagine and write for your absolutely ideal theatre; a theatre that has no cast restrictions, attracts only brilliant actors, designers and directors, is physically magically flexible, has a huge loyal intelligent audience who are longing to see plays exactly like yours.  Add any other characteristics that are important to you!

This is a competition for the BEST play, not the most stageable one - and they think too many playwrights are getting a bit safe, a bit stuck in a rut.  If you think you could be one of them, use this excuse to explode yourself out of it!  Playmarket's job is to encourage theatres to stage the plays that playwrights want to write, not the other way round!

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