SCR Offers Playwriting Contest

South Coast Repertory has launched a major playwriting competition open to residents of California, it was announced last week.

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 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.

The competition deadline is Oct. 31. 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 producting artistic director David Emmes.