The newly-announced 2024 Lancaster Playwriting Prize - the fifth - focuses on young writers in two age brackets: 12-15 and 16-18 years.
The competition is open to entrants living or learning in Lancashire, who must be over 12 but not 19 by the submission deadline, next January 12. The winner of each group will receive cash and vouchers worth £750 as well as a staged public reading of their work next April at Lancaster's Dukes theatre. The theatre organises the competition alongside Lancaster University.
The competition focuses on a different writing category each year. The first was aimed at ethnically-diverse writers, while subsequent ones have covered unproduced writers over 55; LGBTQAI+ writers and deaf, disabled or neurodiverse writers.
Submitted scripts should be 15-30 minutes long; guidance will be available for those who might not have written plays or scripts before.
Dukes director Karen O’Neill said: “The Lancaster Playwriting Prize is a great opportunity for playwrights in the North. Creating a space for different perspectives and views on the world from under-heard communities is very important to the Dukes, and it's so exciting this year to be opening this opportunity to young writers and hearing their voices and stories.”
Full details here