Engage: 10 Minute Playwriting Competition
Submissions Open
The Billings is a theatre where community participants and companies are invited to tell their stories. To celebrate this, The Billings will present a selection of short plays, written by community writers.
If you’re aged 18+ and are not a professional playwright, we invite you to submit your play for the 10-Minute Playwriting Competition. Do you have a burning idea for a story that you want to put to paper and see performed? All submissions will receive insights from the project’s professional writers.
A handful of plays will go on to be developed with a professional writer and performed by Engage actors as part of The Billings’ opening season in April
How To Enter
Eligibility
- Anyone aged 18 or over can enter.
- You won’t have had a play or work of fiction professionally published or produced.
- The competition is free to enter, and all plays will receive short feedback from the project’s two professional writers.
- Plays need to be typewritten, in double-spaced script, and submitted by email as a pdf.
If typing presents a barrier to submitting your play, please contact us to discuss other formats.
Email your 10-minute play to with the subject line 10 Minute Playwriting Competition Please include:
- your name
- your age
- up to 50 words about yourself.
The deadline is Sunday 3 January 2027.
Length 10 minutes:
This will likely be between 7–12 pages of script and approximately 1500 words, but please read your play to check timings. Your play can be shorter but not longer than 10 minutes.
Cast
Your play can have as many characters as you want, and set your play wherever you want. Each selected play will have 3 Engage actors in, but don’t worry about how your play would be produced; that someone else’s job!
Selection process
The Billings is a space where people will be able to try out new ideas and feel they belong. There is no specific theme: we’re looking for writers who have something to say. Give consideration to what the story is about: why this story, why now.
We will be looking for compelling voices, stories that resonate and a blend of writer’s perspectives.
There are no rules regarding ‘style’. Tell us the story you want to tell, whether that’s naturalistic, or more stylised – feel free to explore form and use multi-disciplinary elements in your writing.
8 plays will be selected to be taken forward. Selected plays will be supported by a professional writer including script meetings.
Playwrights will be contacted in January to let them know whether their play is being taken forwards or not.
Good Luck!