SCR Opens Contest for Playwrights

South Coast Repertory has launched a major playwriting competition open to residents of California.

The Costa Mesa theater company will award a total of $10,000 to three winners--$5,000 for first prize, $3,000 for second, $2,000 for third--which places the competition among the nation’s most lucrative for unproduced plays.

Called the California Playwrights Competition, it will be part of SCR’s first California Play Festival to be held in April, 1989, during the company’s 25th anniversary season. The festival also will include world premieres of three new plays by California writers--one on the Mainstage and two in repertory on the Second Stage--as well as workshops and readings.

“When we first talked about the competition in January, we were a little dubious of getting into prize money,” SCR literary manager John Glore said Thursday. “It makes playwrights sound like prize fighters. So we decided to think of the awards as retroactive commissions, which is one way of supporting playwrights.”

The SCR competition deadline is Oct. 31, 1988. Only full-length plays that have never been professionally produced will be considered. Contestants may submit as many as two plays. Large-scale, commercially oriented musicals will not be considered, nor will children’s plays, translations or plays not in English.

“Our hope is that at least one of the winning plays would be produced during the festival,” said SCR producing artistic director David Emmes.

Other major prizes for unproduced plays include:

The $7,500 National Play Award, given every two years by the National Repertory Theater Foundation in Los Angeles. Another $5,000 goes to the first professional theater that produces the play.

The $5,000 Julie Harris Playwright Award, given annually by the Beverly Hills Theater Guild.

The Geraldine R. Dodge Award, instituted this year by the Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey. It carries two $10,000 prizes.

The Mobil Playwrighting Competition, perhaps the most lucrative play contest for unproduced plays--with prizes of more than $25,000--was discontinued this year. The most widely known competition, though not the most lucrative, is the Great American Play Contest conducted since 1976 by the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Ky. Winners receive $1,000 for one-act plays.

The California Playwrights Competition was made possible by a $43,500 challenge grant from the California Arts Council, an SCR spokesman said. The grant provides seed money for the entire California Play Festival, which is expected to cost $173,500.