Last year saw the launch of the SCrIBE Script Writing Competition, supported by The Imbewu Trust.
Submissions are now being accepted for entry into the second year of the competition and entries will close on July 31. The Imbewu Trust is a non-profit organisation that looks to promote and give a platform to South African arts.
Paul Griffiths is a director, a trustee of The Imbewu Trust and the SCrIBE Script Writing Competition is also his brainchild.
“We want to be a part of creating a new literary voice of South Africa,” he tells me. “In South Africa, playwrights will write and sometimes direct their own work. There seems to be this combination of director, writer and producer and I thought there must be writers who are interested in just writing, irrespective of whether they have theatre experience or not.”
He says the Imbewu Trust is “not just specific to promoting writing. It aims to take people at different stages of development and help them. In other projects, actors do some community work and for the more established practitioners in the industry, there is a New York showcase where the idea is to facilitate and encourage a cultural exchange.This new writing competition facilitates an opportunity for writers to take their work from page to stage.”
Gabriella Pinto’s play, Chickens, was the first winner of the com- petition and got the chance and the resources to stage her new play at The Magnet Theatre.
This year, the prize is a short run (and the financial support, within a budget, to stage the play) at the Theatre Arts Admin Collective in Observatory.
Of Pinto’s play, Griffiths says: “I’ll talk for myself rather than the judging panel, but what I liked about Chickens is that it focused on young people in Cape Town. The youth being at a stage where they are filled with ideas and energy and entering a world of conventions that were established by old, mature people. Her dialogue was economical and had a fantastic rhythm to it.”
However, the competition’s judging panel – which comprises theatre practitioners – will not be looking for a replica of Chickens to win this year.
“If we think of the theatre climate today,” starts Griffiths, “many people in the industry draw references from international models because we don’t have a huge legacy of existing models in South Africa. (This country) is connected to a legacy of protest theatre whereas in other cultures that have been through a transitional phase, you can choose to focus on the transition or to tell different, individual story.”
“We’re saying: ‘whatever world you’re in, write about it. How you are affected. Focus on the humanity that we share,’ “ he continues.
“Sometimes writers feel that for a play to resonate it needs to focus on the issues affecting the context – like crime, disease and socio-economics – rather than focusing on the human aspect.
“Theatre has the potential for transforming perceptions and if the audience can begin to connect to the human experience in a play, they can begin to feel the effect of theatre.”
So if you think you have what it takes to stage a new play, enter now.
• Submit new plays to the Imbewu Trust by July 31.
For more details, visit www.imbewuarts.com