The Stephen Joseph Theatre has a proud history of producing exciting, inspiring, world-class new writing. As well as producing the world premieres of Alan Ayckbourn’s plays, they have produced new writing by playwrights including Torben Betts, Vanessa Brooks, Fiona Evans, Tim Firth, Vicky Ireland, Dawn King, Stephen Mallatratt and Claudine Toutoungi.

If you have written a brilliant play which you think would be a great fit for the SJT, they would like to hear from you.

Criteria

· New, original plays

· Plays with a focus on local/regional stories, ideally Yorkshire or coastal

· Plays which are bold and theatrically adventurous

· Adaptations of books/films (if you already have the adaptation rights)

· Plays with female protagonists and at least 50% female characters

· Work for families and young people

· New musicals

Female writers, ethnically diverse writers and writers from diverse socio-economic backgrounds are currently under-represented in submissions, therefore they are particularly interested in receiving plays from these writers. The SJT is committed to engaging with artists from a wide range of backgrounds and identities, because they believe that this results in the most interesting, vibrant, and engaging theatre.

They are NOT currently looking for:

· Proposals or incomplete scripts

· First drafts – as we do not have the capacity to accept resubmissions

· Plays that have already been produced

· Biographical plays about historical figures

Sometimes writers send their plays to the SJT because they feel they are ‘Ayckbourn-esque’. Since we are lucky enough to have the real Alan Ayckbourn working here at the SJT, we are unlikely to programme plays which are very similar to his work. If you think that your play falls into this category, then we suggest that it might be better suited to other theatres.

Deadlines

30th September 2021

The literary department is small, and we want to engage with the work of as many different writers as possible. For this reason, they can only accept one script submission per writer per year.

https://www.sjt.uk.com/aboutus/new_writing