Kumu Kahua Theatre and Bamboo Ridge Press Reveal The September Winner
Each month Kumu Kahua Theatre co-sponsors this playwriting contest with Bamboo Ridge Press in their combined effort to nurture local playwrights and authors.
By: Stephi Wild Oct. 23, 2025
The September Go Try PlayWrite winner is Gordon Blitz for his piece Caged. After forty years as an accountant, Gordon Blitz retired in 2017 and became a passionate writing machine. As a senior LGBTQ+ man, he has a unique perspective on the many facets of being LGBTQ+ for the last fifty years. He is a multi-media creative artist, novelist, playwright and performer.
In 2023, Reflections of A Gay Jewish Boy had a performance at the Region 8 Kennedy
Center American Theater College Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada and became a finalist for the
National Festival in Washington D.C. A Homeless Thanksgiving had a reading in 2025 as part of the Talking It Out Festival at the Spit & Vigor Blackbox Theatre, NYC. The short play, The Aftermath, was published in the June, 2025 issue of Mini Plays Review. Additionally, his play, Climate Change, was selected for the Climate Action New Play Collective at DePaul University. Transplant has been accepted into 321 Plays for Trans Futures.
In 2021, his novella, Shipped Off, was published by Running Wild Press in Novella
Anthology Volume 4, Book 1. Since 2021, he has published the novels Stretched Love, Murder Times Three: A Waverly Place Mystery, Transformation and Acceptance, The Hermaphrodites, Harmonic Dissonance and It's No Laughing Matter.
In 2025, a documentary about his life called -Walk in the Park-A Life Rewritten was made. The movie is available for viewing on a link in his YouTube channel-https://www.youtube.com/@MrGblitz
Each month Kumu Kahua Theatre co-sponsors this playwriting contest with Bamboo Ridge Press in their combined effort to nurture local playwrights and authors. Each month a different judge is pulled from amongst the theatre practitioners in the Hawaii theatre community. All plays submitted are read by Kumu Kahua Theatre Artistic Director, Harry Wong III.
September 2025 Prompt:
A “There's actually nothing funny about this” prompt. Hey writers, I believe it's our job to hold people in power up to ridicule when they deserve it. That's our job as artist; to lessen the fear that keep the people in power in power by pointing out their idiocy and hypocracy. That being said, write a ten-page maximum scene about an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
Contest Rules: Each entrant must write a 5-page monologue and/or a 10-page scene based on monthly requirements. Each month a new prompt will be chosen by Kumu Kahua Theatre's Artistic Director. The prompt will be given on or by the 1st of the month and the due date will always be the last day of the month. All entries must be written in traditional play format; instructions on this format can be found here: https://www.dramatistsguild.com/script-formats courtesy of the Dramatists Guild.
There will be one winner each month. Scripts will be submitted to the judges anonymously. So please do not put your name on the cover of your script. Winners will receive $100.00 and a subscription to Bamboo Ridge Press.
Hawaii Awards - Live Stats
Best Musical - Top 3
1.
PARADE (Manoa Valley Theatre)
31.1% of votes
2.
IRVING BERLIN’S WHITE CHRISTMAS (Diamond Head Theatre)
22% of votes
3.
ONCE ON THIS ISLAND (Manoa Valley Theatre)
11.6% of votes
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