SCR Launching Playwright Contest With $25,000 Grant

The American Express Company has awarded a $25,000 grant to South Coast Repertory to help underwrite the Costa Mesa theater’s second annual California Playwrights Competition and Play Festival.

The contest, which is open to California residents, has a top prize of $5,000 for an unproduced script and runner-up prizes of $3,000 and $2,000. The winning script may also be chosen for an SCR production on the Second Stage in May, 1990.

Cristofer Gross, a spokesman for SCR, declined Monday to specify the size of the grant. The amount was released by Jennifer Dalsimer, a spokeswoman for American Express in New York.

Last season, SCR raised $174,000 to finance the first play contest and festival, of which $43,500 came from a California Arts Council challenge grant. The theater does not have an Arts Council grant for the festival this year.

The top prize in 1989 went to Marlane Meyer for “The Geography of Luck,” which was staged at SCR in May and is currently being staged in an unrelated production at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

The deadline for script submissions to SCR is Nov. 15. Writers must also include a cast list and a play synopsis of no more than 300 words as well as a short biography. Large-scale musicals will not be considered, nor children’s plays, translations and plays in any foreign language. The winners will be announced Jan. 30, 1990.