Playwriting contest WARNING!

The following warning is from The Loop Online:

We've often heard of issues surrounding this contest. This is extracted from someone who was an intern at the theatre. We thought we should pass it forward:

Now the internship is bad, but what I learned about their contest is worse. The scripts she [producer] is so determined to have interns read are submission scripts for their big money making New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest. They charge $25 for the submission, and then offer the option of having your evaluation sent to you: one evaluation for $40 more or two evaluations for $80 more -- a price which she claims to have raised this year to "make it more worth her time". The fact is however that these evaluations are the exact same evaluations which the interns are doing for her. I am personally a graduate student at the _____ @ ___ University as a playwright, however many of the other interns are 18 year old actors fresh to New York having never attended college, some are undergraduate NYU students confused about how to read a script, and still others are simply people interested in becoming a "theater person" and looking to this internship to help them make an educated decision about whether or not to do it . . . .As far as I know she's the only "professional" who ever reads these submissions, and even with that she said on one occasion that if a script gets enough bad reviews she doesn't even bother reading it. After having spent three weeks with this group, I would strongly recommended that no serious playwright ever remotely consider this contest. And while I am sympathetic that this would mean losing another venue in a constantly depleting collection of outlets, I believe the practices which her group employ require this action. Hopefully this will help other people out there looking for a place to submit. Thanks for your time.

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