The 2018 contest has concluded. Please check back in September for information on the 2019 contest.
The 2018 contest has concluded. Please check back in September for information on the 2019 contest.
Student Jane Chambers Playwriting Contest
The Jane Chambers Student Playwriting Award recognizes plays and performance texts created by cis/trans/female-identifying women that present a feminist perspective and contain significant opportunities for female performers. This competition is open to both graduate and undergraduate students. The Jane Chambers Award for emergent playwrights encourages diversity of style and content. All forms of drama are accepted, including solo performance work.
The winning play will receive a staged reading at the annual Women and Theatre Program pre-conference, which will be held in August prior to the Theatre in Higher Education Conference (ATHE). The student winner will receive a $250 cash prize and a year's membership in Women and Theatre.
Please click here or to the right to access the application for the 2024 award!
2024 Winner
MULAQAT by Malaika Fernandes
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Mulaqat Synopsis:
As her husband’s return from his international work trip becomes indefinitely delayed, Tanya finds herself pregnant and alone in the U.S. Her mother, Damini, rushes from India to take care of her; her mother-in-law, Noor, follows from Pakistan soon after. But Damini only speaks Marathi and Noor only speaks Urdu; the two can only interact when Tanya mediates between them in English, the language they both understand. The three women must learn to communicate with each other as they await the birth of the child.
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Malaika Fernandes (she/her/hers) is a Brooklyn-based playwright from Mumbai and a few other places, whose work explores her own ever-broadening, ever-fluctuating definition of home. Her plays include MULAQAT (Wesleyan University reading; The Workshop Theater Intensive), BANJAARA (The Workshop Theater Intensive), and Eyebrows On (Horizon Theater New South Young Playwrights Festival winner). Malaika graduated with a BA in Theater and Economics from Wesleyan University, where she received the 2023 Theater Outreach & Community Service Award and the Rachel Henderson Award for Excellence in Theater. Malaika was the 2023-24 Producing & Community Engagement Apprentice at Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. She now works as the Casting Assistant at Manhattan Theatre Club and is a 2024-25 Writing Fellow at the Playwrights Realm.
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2024 Honorable Mention
MONSTROUS by Elle Thoni
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Mary's search for an abortion provider lands them in 1720s England, where they pass as Mary Toft, a historical figure notorious for giving birth to rabbits. A queer exploration of rage in the post-Roe era, 'Monstrous' confronts government control over bodily autonomy with absurdity and magic.
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Elle Thoni (they/them) is a femmebeast playwright and public artist from Dakota land in Minneapolis. In search of wildness amidst this Great Unraveling, they write plays about queer shapeshifters, emergent ecologies, and unlikely kinship. Their plays include From the Ground Up (Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, Planet Earth Playwriting Award, and second place Mark Twain Award for Comic Playwriting - Kennedy Center) and Monstrous, or, A Short Narrative on an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbits (O’Neill Semifinalist, second place Paula Vogel Playwriting Award - Kennedy Center). TAMARACK, their small town dramady TV pilot about critical mineral mining and green colonialism in Minnesota’s Northland, was recently announced as the $25,000 first place winner of the CMU-Alfred P. Sloan Script Competition. Elle is a current Core Apprentice Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center, a proud member of the Dramatists Guild, and an anxious amateur beekeeper. M.F.A. Dramatic Writing: Carnegie Mellon University. ellethoni.com
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