Playwriting Contest

Searchlight Theatre exists to communicate the Truth of God’s Word in fresh new ways through contemporary characters and stories, like Jesus’ parables did in for His contemporaries. We want to hear your stories! For our first ever one-act contest, we are looking for great contemporary faith-based one-act plays (no longer than 30 minutes run time).

By contemporary, we mean any time period other than Bible times. If you want to write a period piece about the 1700s or a future post-apocalyptic piece or a story set in current day 2017 or a fantasy set in a whole other world, great! But we are not looking for plays about Bible stories set in biblical times.

By faith-based, we mean a story based on a Christian worldview, but not overtly evangelistic, nor a play with a conversion as the central storyline. Think more The Blind Side, less Facing the Giants. Our plays are always based on a Christian worldview, but the themes of our plays have been about many things – therapy, adultery, infertility, revenge, parenthood, bullying, finding your gifts, family dynamics, divorce and reconciliation, forgiveness, listening and showing compassion, hypocrisy and grace, and much more.

If you have any questions at all about the types of plays we are looking for, please contact our director, Kathy Larson (704-364- 1234; searchlightTC@gmail.com).

The top three plays will receive cash prizes and will have an opportunity to be fully produced on stage by Searchlight Theatre Company together as a one-act festival in 2018.

First Place: $500

Second Place: $250

Third Place: $100

Our goal is to partner with fresh new voices in faith-based playwriting, to develop new stories and to give you an opportunity to have your work produced. Ideally, all of the top three plays will be produced, and perhaps more, but if, for some reason, we do not have enough qualified entries, we do reserve the right to postpone the festival or ask you if we can workshop your plays first.

Script Submission Rules:
- Must be a faith-based but non-biblical-period story, any genre
- Must be original, unpublished, and unproduced
- Electronic Submissions (PDF only) emailed to searchlightTC@gmail.com
- Can be in any acceptable play script format with title and page number on each page
- Must not have your name anywhere on the script; only on separate contact information form
- Must fill out contact information form for each script submitted
- Entry deadline: December 31, 2017. Winners notified by February 1, 2018.

Entry in this contest gives Searchlight Theatre the rights to produce the one-act as part of our festival, but copyright for all plays remain with the playwright.