Script selection process
How do we select plays?
At PlayWriting Australia we approach the selection of plays with care and precision. It is a multi-stage process that involves a number of different readers assessing plays across a detailed list of criteria. It is a process that also allows for readers to be in conversation with us and with each other, ensuring quality control of reader’s responses.
This method is the product of over ten years experience at producing theatres across Australia and the awareness that plays must be read with great sensitivity and attention to detail in order to find fine, honest, disarming, fierce, innovative, tender, joyous new work for production.
We believe terrific new writing must be produced and we do this reading to give playwrights opportunities to develop and/or showcase their best new plays in order to see the work reach production.
All plays submitted to PlayWriting Australia are read in their entirety. In the first stage of selection, all plays are also read ‘blind’. That is, plays are read without the reader having any knowledge of the identity of the playwright.
Plays are assessed against the following criteria:
§ originality
§ narrative
§ story
§ characterisation
§ quality of the dialogue and use of language
§ use of form
§ stage imagery
§ use of symbol and metaphor
§ engagement with the social or political context
§ the gap between form and content
§ the gap between intention and effect
§ the reader’s gut response
§ the quality of the voice
§ the ambition of the work
§ the intended genre
§ the theatricality of the play
At this stage, plays are also scored against five criteria: character, dialogue, plot, themes and ideas, and theatricality. We also ask the reader to write a brief synopsis of the play, note what they enjoyed, and what they were more critical of. Each reader receives between five and twenty scripts to assess, and we instruct them to rank the plays in their batch.
This combination of scoring, discursive response, ranking and checking against criteria is an invaluable, meticulous and productive technique to ensure each script is given the best chance to make it through, if it is good, to the next stage of assessment. The score and ranking may disagree with one another but the final arbiter here is a recommendation to move to the next level.
For the National Script Workshop we also ask the playwright to provide development notes because plays submitted for the Workshop are more than likely to be incomplete or at an early draft stage, giving the writer a chance to let us know their ambition and vision for the play.
The results of this first stage are checked by PlayWriting Australia staff and anomalies are investigated and often move through to the second round of reading to ensure there is no bias or unreasonable subjectivity. A second panel of readers (different to the first), readers aware of the identity of the playwright, then read and assess the highest achievers from the first round. Their responses are discursive, though they too respond to the same criteria as the first round readers. The second round readers discuss their shortlist with our artistic staff at some length.
The final stage of the process involves artistic staff of PlayWriting Australia reading and responding to both the first and second round shortlists. Plays are read for a third, and often fourth, time and both first and second round readers are again consulted. Artistic staff at PlayWriting Australia discuss the plays in detail and may at this point discuss the script and the specific development opportunity on offer with the applicant as the final selections are made. Quality of script, however, is the final arbiter. Many, many playwrights apply for places at the National Script Workshop or the National Play Festival but our resources are limited and it is therefore a very competitive process.
This is a rigorous procedure and one that is demanding and necessarily time-consuming. We are confident that our readers are fastidious, fair-minded and have a good, practical knowledge of the theatre. The readers are playwrights, directors, dramaturgs and actors – the list of each year’s readers appears in our Annual Report (links).
It is a method that rewards the innovative and the ambitious, those with great skill and those with grand emotional generosity. It does not over-compensate for the idiosyncratic nor does it leaven difference or distinctiveness.
The process does not favour any style over another, any age bracket over another or a writer’s geographical location over any another. It is entirely about the work and its qualities.
In 2011 we have so far supported the work of 46 playwrights ranging across an enormous range of styles, subject matters and scales. We have championed political satire, the abstract and experimental, hard-hitting realism, tightly written naturalism, comedy and heightened naturalism. We have supported emerging playwrights, mid-career playwrights and established playwrights. Between 2007 and 2010 we supported the work of 30 female playwrights and 21 male playwrights and thus far in 2011 we championed 23 female and 15 male playwrights.
Beyond selection for the National Play Festival and the National Script Workshop we offer other programmes (State Exchange and Creative Development Studio) and opportunities, one of which, PostScript is unique across the world. Most particularly, PostScript is open to all comers, offering writers a) a chance to be considered by those working in our nation’s theatre, b) some feedback and c) a no-cost way to become part of the fabric of Australian theatre.
On theatre critic James Waites’ theatre blog a reader commented on 17 June that a recent new play was ‘a masterclass’ in playwriting. She went on to list the reasons why: ‘language written to be performed, savoured by actors. Vigorous and confident. Imaginative and theatrical’. We look to reward plays that generate similar enthusiasm in theatregoers for similar reasons, that persuasive combination of talent and skill, inventiveness and craft, sharpness of vision, intellect, intuition and grace.
Chris Mead
Artistic Director
