THE LESLIE SCALAPINO AWARD FOR INNOVATIVE WOMEN PERFORMANCE WRITERS

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Deadline March 20 2018

In memory of Leslie Scalapino, her extraordinary body of work, and her commitment to the community of experimental writing and performance.  Read about Leslie here. The Leslie Scalapino Award recognizes the importance of exploratory approaches and an innovative spirit in writing for performance.  Thus far the award has honored Joyelle McSweeney’s Dead Youth, or The Leaks, Khadijah Queen’s Non-Sequitur, and Brigid McLeer’s The Triumph of Crowds, as well as our wonderful finalists.

The Prize: The winner will receive a $2,500 cash prize, print publication of the winning text by Litmus Press, and a staged reading of the piece in New York this fall, by Fiona Templeton’s company The Relationship.  The award is biennial.

The Call:

Please read the guidelines carefully as the terms of the award have changed.

We are looking for a full-length work for live performance by a woman writer with an inquiring approach to language and content. The poetic practice of Leslie Scalapino was interdisciplinary, including photography, plays, performance, and collaboration with dance and music. We would like to honor this aspect of her work in the award.The Award for Innovative Women Playwrights intends to support new writing by women-identified writers.  The prize is open to international submissions in English.

While the principal focus for the award is on innovative writing for performance, competitive submissions may consider a range of approaches to innovation in performance, including but not limited to integrated experimentations with language, gesture, movement, sound, visual art / vision, site / location and/or activist practice. The writer should demonstrate some experience in the discipline, materials or medium involved.

Applicants should have had no more than 3 productions of their work, as the award is intended to open up opportunities, although it is not limited to emerging writers. Artists from other disciplines newly working in performance are welcomed. The submitted work should not have been previously published or produced, with no publication or production scheduled before December 2019. We do not define productions according to an Equity theatrical hierarchy, but as a professional realization of the work beyond a reading or work-in progress presentation.
The award will be biennial, but until further notice there will be no confirmed production attached to the award, although we will work towards this possibility. We will retain production rights until December 2019, at which point they will revert to the author.

How to apply:

Submissions are via Submittable, reachable here.  You will be asked for:
1.  A 10-page excerpt from a completed work.
2.  Your CV.
3. A further single page of work statement, to include a)  a summary of the work, and b) a description of your approach. Please be brief and to the point.  We will not read beyond the number of pages requested.


Timeline:

Call for entries: Feb 26, 2018
Deadline:  March 20, 2018
Full texts requested from shortlist:  May 18, 2018
Deadline for full texts:  June 1, 2018
Winners and finalists announced:  Mid-July 2018

The Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights is funded by the Leslie Scalapino-O Books Fund and supported by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and is administered by The Relationship. Publication of award-winning works will be in collaboration with Litmus Press. For more information about Leslie Scalapino, please visit her website: www.lesliescalapino.com.