Many of the plays submitted are stunning pieces and deserve to be furthered along in the endeavor to have them read or produced. We encourage you all to continue developing your craft and to write scripts that bring new awareness to others. For Comments about Evaluations from Contest Playwrights: Please click Sample Evaluation on Toolbar |
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WINNERS: 2011 WINNER FIRST PLACE: Goldendale by Kevin K. Berry 2011 HONORABLE MENTION Long Way Home by D.J. Jones 2010 WINNERS FIRST PLACE: (a tie for First Place) Breeders by Bob Ost Three Generations of Imbeciles by William Baer SECOND PLACE: The Barbecue by Buddy Farmer FINALIST: A Good Day by Susan Hickey 2010 HONORABLE MENTION A Magical Midnight by Nicolette Vaitay Aftermath by Sarah Cole Piano Lessons for Dad by John Kaasik Unnatural Selection by Steve Neufeld
2009 WINNERS FIRST PLACE: Seeking Flight by Joan Broadman SECOND PLACE: Covered Girl by Aaron Davis THIRD PLACE: Fault Lines by Kim Brundidge FINALIST: Cheese by Laurel Ollstein FINALIST: Gorilla by Rhea Leman 2009 HONORABLE MENTION Amends by Nick Robideau Bunny and the Moon: a Chinese Fairytale by Catherine Boyle Gifted by Carrie Printz Make Sure It's me by Kate Wenner Sultan's Battery by Kathy Rucker Then Waves by Kevin Anthony Kautzman
2008 WINNERS SECOND PLACE: Letter from a Soldier: My Name is Aslam by Debra Victoroff
2008 HONORABLE MENTION 90 Miles of Separation by Tony Macy-Perez Alabama Baggage by Buddy Farmer Catching Carp by Richard Nannariello Gaming on Sacred Ground by Suzanne Bailie Gentlefucknation by Johnmichael Rossi Higher Concepts by Joan Dunayer Katrina’s Path by Rob Florence Michael's Race by Linda Goldberg Mystery of the White Slave by William Rumbler Orbit by Brie Wittman Race Relations by Carrie Printz Sangre de un Angel by Roxanne Schroeder-Arce Split Ends by Venus Opal Reese The Far End of the Earth by Keith McGregor Through the Tulips by Naomi Tessler
FINALIST: Home Again, Jiggety Jig by Janet Torreano Pound
FINALIST: The Turtle Gets There Too by Arni Ibsen |
UPDATES: 2011 CONTEST WINNERS Goldendale by Kevin K. Berry received a reading at 13th Street Rep March 11, 2012. 2010 CONTEST WINNERS Breeders by Bob Ost received a reading at 13th Street Rep February 20, 2011. Three Generations of Imbeciles by WIlliam Baer received a reading at 13th Street Rep March 6, 2011 The Barbecue by Buddy Farmer received a reading at 13th Street Rep Aug 16, 2011. 2009 CONTEST WINNERS Covered Girl by Aaron Davis recieved a reading at 13th St Rep August 22, 2010. Seeking Flight by Joan Broadman received a reading at 13th Street Rep February 27, 2011. 2008 CONTEST WINNERS Another Dude's Slingbacks: A Fairy Tale in Two Acts was given a full production at 13th Street Rep February 26 - April 4, 2010. Andrew Black is collaborating with award-winning lyricist June Rachelson-Ospa (Final Judge for the contest) to turn the play into a musical. The musical, which is now called Big Man on Campus, had a 3rd workshop reading at 13th Street Rep on March 21, 2011. Letter to a Soldier by Debra Victoroff received a reading at 13th St Rep on October 10, 2011. Aporia by Paul David Young received a reading at 13th St Rep on October 10, 2011. Inside the Coma of Wayne Morse won the 2009 Mario Fratti-Fred Newman Political Play Writing Contest. Congratulations Steve!
2007 CONTEST WINNERS A Human Shield was given a full production by 13th Street Repertory in NYC as a direct result of the reading produced by New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest. A Human Shield received a production September 26 - November 2, 2008. Sow and Weep received a reading at 13th Street Rep on March 2, 2008. 2006 CONTEST WINNERS Applause books is publishing The Trash Bag Tourist in it's 2006-2007 volume. 2005 CONTEST WINNERS The play is being turned into a film written by Rudy Gray and Sandra Nordgren - 2012. nytheatre.com 2006: "One of those rare shows important enough and powerful enough to warrant strong support and a large audience." nytheatre.com 2009: "A riveting and memorable profile in courage, and it tells a story that's important to our collective history and character." Backstage 2009: "A vivid glimpse of the ubiquitous Ku Klux Klan's lynching culture in the Deep South during the Coolidge administration." Velocity received a reading at 13th St Rep on April 10, 2005.
2003 CONTEST WINNERS Ruby's Story was given a full production by 13th Street Repertory in NYC as a direct result of the reading produced by New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest. The play was produced for a 2nd time by 13th Street Rep June 12 – July 19, 2009. Ruby's Story was also produced May 20 - July 10, 2004. Ron Osborne: "I don't know how to thank you for the opportunity to see RUBY on your stage... The entire cast was special ... Troy Miller's direction was exceptional!"
In 2007, Sandra Nordgren sent Fenced In to Annie Sopher at the Collective Theater Co in NYC for consideration for production. |
PLAY LOG LINES / SYNOPSES 2011 WINNING SCRIPTS 2011 FIRST PLACE: Goldendale by Kevin K. Berry The Martins, a retired couple living in a small rural farming town are about to sell their house to a couple from LA with two children and then move to Arizona until they find out the couple are two men. When coming face to face with the men, the Martins must confront a hidden family tragedy concerning one of their sons. 2010 WINNING SCRIPTS 2010 FIRST PLACE: (a tie) Three Generations of Imbeciles by William Baer Eugenics asserts that "heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, idiocy, imbecility, epilepsy and crime." This play takes place in 1927, just after the birth of the eugenics theory in America. An idealistic young lawyer tries to stop a young girl with a low IQ from being sterilized against her will, but finds himself thwarted by America's quest to develop the perfect race. 2010 FIRST PLACE: (a tie) Breeders by Bob Ost In response to overpopulation and the general bad state of the world, an artists’ colony takes a moral stance forbidding its members from further breeding. No problem, since they are all gay … until two members discover their latent heterosexuality. 2010 SECOND PLACE: The Barbecue by Buddy Farmer A rich Rush Limbaugh type man and his less conservative wife have a spur-of-the-moment barbecue attended by several uninvited guests from various ethnic, cultural, sexual, and racial backgrounds. This clash of diversity results in fights, a bad drug deal, child birth and a social catharsis for the host as well as many of the guests. 2010 FINALIST: A Good Day by Susan Hickey A young twenty-something overcoming a traumatic past of sexual abuse and drug abuse, and an elderly man overcoming the trauma of the holocaust must work together to realize the difference between living and surviving. 2009 WINNING SCRIPTS: 2009 FIRST PLACE: Seeking Flight by Joan Broadman Confined to a lab, Monty and Enzi are African gray parrots used in experiments that test their ability to speak English and form concepts. Monty was born in captivity. Enzi, however, once lived free, in the Congolese rainforest. Seeking the freedom that would allow them to fulfill their parrot nature, Enzi urges Monty to join him in rebellion. In Seeking Flight, the voices of birds tell us that genuine justice and equality should include all living beings. 2009 SECOND PLACE: Covered Girl by Aaron Davis A grieving widower and a teenage girl form an unusual friendship. He lost his wife on 9/11 and she's been hiding from everyone that she is Muslim. When her father finds out, he confronts his daughter and the widower's warped view on what it means to be a Muslim. 2009 THIRD PLACE: Fault Lines by Kim Brundidge Though his family has been unraveling for years, Michael has never given up on it. Two years after his sister dies, he returns home to his dying mother and his distant father to try to heal the rifts between them. 2009 FINALIST: Cheese by Laurel Ollstein Griffin, a cheese sculptor, struggles in his marriage to Cindy, who lives in denial over the loss of their young son. Enter, Billie, Cindy's best friend, a knocked-up, wanna-be Hollywood actress, running from her failures. The secrets they keep and lies they tell fester and spoil like the rotting cheese that surrounds them, in this twisted, modern, Kaufman and Hart-esque laugher. 2009 FINALIST: Gorilla by Rhea Leman 2008 WINNING SCRIPTS: 2008 FIRST PLACE: Another Dude’s Slingbacks: A Fairy Tale in Two Acts by Andrew Black. When a fairy godmother grants a gay classmate's vengeful wish, "Killer" Kerrigan, the homophobic quarterback of the Lincoln High football team, is magically transformed into a homosexual. The football star learns what life is like on the other side of the pom-poms, and the gay student discovers that you better be careful what you wish for. 2008 SECOND PLACE: Letter from a Soldier: My Name is Aslam by Debra Victoroff. A soldier writes to his girlfriend and tells her about an Iraqi family he got to know there. Being in Iraq and meeting this family and the villagers at the market has changed him. In doing so, he confronts his own humanity and that of the citizenry of Iraq. 2008 THIRD PLACE: Aporia by Paul David Young. The play shows the atrocities of war on a personal level, a disassociated media, and the duality of American culture with that of other cultures. The play also shows the sameness of the human needs of all people. 2008 FINALIST: Kick flip by Nicole Gabriella Scipione. A complex story of a young man on a quest to find himself. He gets into drugs, is arrested for possession of drugs, becomes homeless and meets up with a girl from the streets who he falls in love with. Through the ups and downs of life, he winds up back at the doorstep of the house he grew up in and heals old wounds with his father. 2008 FINALIST: Redemption: A Collision of History and Memory in Four Breaths by Venus Opal Reese. The play captures the pinnacle and defining moments which shape the course and content of a character’s existence. These moments address “what part do I play in my own degradation, as an individual and within a society, and what needs to happen to create a new possibility, more seductive than my past, which calls me into the future?” 2008 FINALIST: Inside the Coma of Wayne Morse by Steve Lyons. Wayne Morse is in a coma in a hospital room with a woman who has just given birth to a premature baby. The baby's essence is able to communicate with Wayne, even though he is in a coma. Throughout the play Morse and the baby struggle with whether life is worth living as Waye is thrown back to his experiences of trying to fight against the Gulf War. In the end, the baby decides that life really is worth living and makes the decision to live. 2007 WINNING SCRIPTS: 2007 FIRST PLACE: A Human Shield by Robert L. Kinast. New Year's Eve 2010. As the Grant family comes together for their traditional New Year's Eve celebration, the United States is on the verge of war. The ongoing political differences escalate when Dad and twin daughters each share life-changing news. Nothing could have prepared this politically-charged family for the events that followed. 2007 SECOND PLACE: Sow and Weep by Nitzan Halperin. An unconventional exploration of the lives of two families amidst a vicious cycle of hatred and killing. Pulled deep into the Israeli/Palistine conflict by the pain of sudden loss a Palestinian law student an Israeli peace activist, seek a way out only to discover confrontation is their only hope. The play asks us to question the walls we put between ourselves and the Other Side. 2007 THIRD PLACE: Goliath: A Choreopoem in One Act by Takeo Rivera This is the journey of David, one very human man who is just as much a victim, as he is an agent, of unspeakable atrocity. A meditation on the institutional and cultural forces that normalize the violence of war, whether it be war overseas, or the little wars we wage privately with each other on a day-to-day basis. Inspired by a real incident that occurred March 13, 2006 twenty miles south of Baghdad. 2006 WINNING SCRIPTS: 2006 THIRD PLACE: Banana Rat by Phoebe Rusch. An interrogator at Guantanamo Bay is assigned to an enigmatic detainee suspected of planning to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Dubai. They strike up an unlikely rapport, one which is complicated by manipulation and deceit. As the interrogation progresses, issues of terrorism, religion, betrayal, and a government that has taken on a leadership role it does not own, create a tangled web where truth cannot reveal itself. 2005 WINNING SCRIPTS: 2005 FIRST PLACE WINNER: God, Sex and Blue Water by Linda Faigao-Hall This unconventional farce about religion and family love focuses on a Filipino family's attempts to assimilate in America. Laling, a deeply religious woman, plans on following out the custom of her native homeland by crucifying herself during the Easter pasyon. Her daughter, Clarita, a healer experiencing the stigmata, has just arrived in the US from a childhood in a convent, and has met Brian, an American badly in need of salvation. 2005 SECOND PLACE WINNER: Pow'r in the Blood by T. Cat Ford. A daughter visits her dying mother in this Southern Gothic comedy set against a background of the religious right. Mother and daughter try to touch each other over the gulf of their differences and in doing so bruise each other repeatedly. As the final moment comes, all that is left is a willingness to touch. 2005 THIRD PLACE WINNER: Arkadelphia by Brett Williams. Bobby returns to his hometown of Arkadelphia, Arkansas after a semester of college in Manhattan. Seeking refuge in two childhood friends, he ends up exposing a secret the small, religious town would rather keep buried. 2004 WINNING SCRIPTS: 2004 FIRST PLACE WINNER: Conversations with a Kleagle by Rudy Gray Based on events in the life of civil rights leader Walter White, Conversations with a Kleagle takes place during the height of a lynching epidemic in the late twenties. A black writer, passing for white, travels to the deep South to interview a kleagle (a KKK recruiter). When his true racial identity is discovered by the Klan he escapes, only to find that his rescuer's family paid a dear price, a price that brings the writer back to the south to confront the kleagle and the Klan. 2003 WINNING SCRIPTS: 2003 FIRST PLACE WINNER (a tie): King Christina by Martha Kearns. She was young... she was brilliant... she was a King. A true story about King Christina of 17th century Sweden whose heroism challenged and conquered a divided Europe and whose faith changed the course of history. 2003 FIRST PLACE WINNER (a tie): Ruby's Story by Ron Osborne. June 1944, and the world is at war. On a small truck farm far away from the front lines, a war of another kind rages. Here, teenage Ruby relates her family's struggle -- and eventual victory -- over prejudice, self-loathing, delusion and fear.
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