Play Submissions
Here at Griffin, producing the best new Australian plays is our calling—which is why we’re putting out the call for yours! If you’re a writer and would like to send us your script for consideration, then this is where to submit it.
If you’re an experienced playwright, send us your play via the link below, where you’ll find a form to fill out. Attach your play and your CV, and we’ll send it off to our Artistic Team to read.
We aim to let writers know whether Griffin is interested in developing or programming their play within four months. Our team is very small, and we get a lot of submissions, so sadly we can’t provide feedback to every playwright.
We would like to read plays by experienced writers whose CVs demonstrate:
- A minimum of two professional productions. That could be a mainstage show with a professional company—like us—or a production at a curated independent theatre, like the Old Fitz, La Mama or The Blue Room Theatre… Basically, anything that isn’t student theatre or amateur theatre.
and/or
- Professional development support. Has a professional organisation—like a theatre company, Playwriting Australia, or Sweatshop—developed your play, or helped you work on your craft? If so, we’d love to read your play.
If you don’t meet this criteria—that’s OK, we’ll still read your play! The Griffin Award is for you.
Got questions about your eligibility to send us your play? Please email [email protected].
We’re looking for:
- Ambitious, bold, risk-taking and urgent Australian plays to nurture from the page to the SBW Stables stage. Stories that help us know who we are as a nation, and who we want to become. Stories about us, written by us, for us.
- Plays that have not yet had a premiere production.
- Full-length works. Anything that runs under 45 minutes is something we can’t put on our stage.
- Musicals are fine! …if you reckon your band could fit in the Stables!
We’re not looking for:
- Works in non-theatrical mediums. We’re sure your screenplays, radio plays, short stories, and novels are very good, but we don’t have time to read them, sorry!
- Outlines for devised work or live art pieces. If that’s your type of work—wonderful! Get in touch with a performance text we can read or an recording of the performance that we can watch.
- First drafts! After we’ve read your play once, it’s very rare that we’ll read a new draft, so please send us your second, fourth, or four-hundredth draft—not your first!
- Adaptations of classical European or English plays. No Shakespeare adaptations, please… even if yours is set in the exciting world of corporate mergers and acquisitions.
- Multiple submissions. We only have the resources to accept one play per writer at a time, so please wait until you hear back about your first submission before you send us your second.
- Plays that are predominantly about a culture, sexuality, religion, gender, or ability that you, the writer, do not have a lived experience of.
Your submitted script will:
- Be saved in PDF format (if you’re having trouble doing that, give us a buzz).
- Have correctly numbered pages.
- Include a page footer containing the title of your play.
- Be received digitally. As part of our Green Griffin initiative, we don’t accept hard copy script submissions delivered by post or in person. No exceptions!
SO THEN!
Read all of the above?
Definitely eligible to submit?
Got your excellent play ready to go?
…THEN WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
