I won a playwrighting competition! Here’s how (I think) I did it.
I won a thing!
It was slightly surreal, but just as we were reaching peak activity with the Little Wonder Radio Play Competition I won a stage play competition. I’m certain that organising the first helped me with the second, although the two were quite different. Cité 27 wanted a 27-minute-long stage play, to be played in a 27m2 space, to an audience of 27 people, using only 3 actors. One of the organisers got in touch with me about 10 days before the deadline to say “hey, have you seen this, you should think about submitting”, and because I love a) a deadline and b) a brief, I said “sure, great.” The next day my wife went into labour.[i] Somehow, I managed to finish some sort of play and send it the day before the deadline.
A couple of weeks later I got a lovely email confirming my play had been selected. How? How could such a thing happen? Did I really write a winning play in a week at the same time as dealing with a new baby and very tired wife? Just how many chickens did I sacrifice to Satan?
Well, I can promise you that no chickens were harmed, and that it certainly had nothing to do with talent. But I do have some thoughts about what worked. Read on if you’d like to learn how to fluke your way through a play competition.
