The Echo Theater Company Launches New Play Competition

The Echo Theater Company is now accepting submissions of original (no adaptations or translations), unpublished, unproduced, non-musical stage plays that are between 60 and 150 pages in length for its 2024 New Play Competition.

Cash prizes include a $1000 honorarium for first place, $500 for second place, and $250 for third place. In addition, travel and housing will be provided to the first place winner to attend a rehearsed, public reading of their play at Atwater Village Theater in Los Angeles. The second place winner will receive a rehearsed online reading, and third place will include a note session with members of the Echo’s artistic staff.

Prize committee judges include literary agent Beth Blickers; 59E59 Theaters artistic director Val Day; The Playwrights Realm associate artistic director Alexis Williams; and award-winning playwrights Bernardo Cubría and Guy Zimmerman.

The deadline to apply is July 1, 2024. Winners will be announced on September 1. 

Founded in 1997, the Echo Theater Company has gained a reputation for producing and developing exciting new work. Under the artistic leadership of Chris Fields, the company has championed playwrights for a quarter century, producing and commissioning numerous world premieres and introducing Los Angeles to playwrights David Lindsay-Abaire, Adam Rapp and Sarah Ruhl among others. The Echo has won countless Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, Ovation, LA Weekly and Stage Raw awards, and is frequently cited on end-of-the-year “Best of Lists” including by the Los Angeles Times, LA Observed and NPR affiliate KCRW 89.9 FM, among others. The company was anointed “Best Bet for Ballsy Original Plays” by the LA Weekly and was a recipient of a “Kilroy Cake Drop” to honor its efforts to produce women and trans writers. KCRW declared that “Echo Theater Company is on a fierce journey,” and Los Angeles Times theater critic Charles McNulty wrote, “Artistic directors of theaters of all sizes would be wise to follow the [lead] of the Echo’s Chris Fields, who [is] building audience communities eager for the challenge of path-breaking plays.” 


For more information, go to echotheatercompany.com/new-play-competition.