Etel Adnan Award

The Etel Adnan Award for Women Playwrights - 2010

The Playwriting Competition

The Al-Madina Theatre of Beirut and the Swedish National Touring Theatre (Riksteatern), announce an open call for women playwrights for the 2010 Etel Adnan Award for Women Playwrights. The competition provides an opportunity for winning women writers residing in Arabic-speaking countries to have their plays presented as a reading at the 2012 Women Playwrights International’s Conference (WPI) in Stockholm, Sweden.

Background

Etel Adnan is a Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and visual artist born in Beirut in 1925. She is the daughter of a Greek mother and a Syrian father. She grew up speaking Greek and Turkish in her childhood home, in a primarily Arabic-speaking society. Yet, she was educated at French convent schools, thus French became the language in which her early work was first written. However, most of her later work has been written in English.

At the age of 24, Adnan traveled to Paris where she received a degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne University. She continued her graduate studies in the United States, where she has taught philosophy of art at the universities throughout the country.

Etel Adnan as an author is significant and appealing since she confronts complex matters, such as identity, migration and globalization without simplifying and without pushing an agenda in the hands of the reader. Yet, her clear and highly personal opinions illustrate a strong ethos, and her presence is ever clear and much appreciated.

Selected publications:  "Sitt Marie Rose", "In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country", "The Indian Never Had a Horse and Other Poems", "Of Cities and Women", "Letters to Fawwaz".

Purpose

The Etel Adnan Award for Women Playwrights aspires to increase the number of plays penned by women writers residing in the Arabic-speaking countries. The mission is to disseminate submitted plays in the Arab-speaking region, also elsewhere, particularly in Sweden, which hosts a wide-spread Diaspora from the Middle East.

Recurrence of the competition

The Etel Adnan Award will recur on annual basis during the coming three years, starting from 2010. The last award will be announced during the 2012 WPI Conference.

Prize

One play will be selected by a jury each year. Each laureate will be rewarded the sum of USD 5000, as well as the opportunity to be translated into English. Each play will be presented at a reading during the 2012 WPI Conference.

After the 2012 ceremony, one of the three awarded plays will be co-produced by the Swedish National Touring Theatre and the Al-Madina Theatre, and staged in Lebanon as well as Sweden.

Jury

A jury comprising of scholars, professional playwrights and other artists from the Arabic-speaking region and Sweden will select three plays during 2010 and 2012 (one play for each year).

Submission guidelines

• The play must be written by a woman residing in an Arabic-speaking country.
• Do NOT send the entire play. Please, send an excerpt that is 10 pages long (please, send an excerpt/passage, not an abstract).
• Each playwright may only submit one play on annual basis.
• The play may not entail more than six actors on stage (the number of characters in the play is unlimited)
• The play must be submitted in Arabic, or French or English (or a combination of the two or three listed languages), in digital and hard copy using standard script formatting, with cover or title sheet.
• Do NOT include your name on the play.
• The play must be accompanied by a letter containing playwright’s name, address, telephone number, email address, and a short biography (one paragraph).
• Enclose an email address and a self-addressed, stamped envelope with adequate postage for return of play. Plays received without return envelope and adequate postage will be recycled.
• Submission Deadline for the 2010 Award: 19:00pm, 15 October 2010
• Where to send the play

NAME : Masrah Al Madina

ADDRESS: Saroula BLDG, Hamra Street, Beirut, Lebanon

EMAIL  : eteladnanawards@gmail.com

The hosts of the Etel Adnan Award

Al Madina Theatre, founded by actor and director Nidal Al Achkar in 1994.  It is a non-profit association which aims to promote dialogue and to create a space of free expression for

all issues regarding the Lebanese and Arab societies.

 Al Madina Theatre is a multidisciplinary platform bringing together artists, writers and intellectuals to present their work on stage, screen, and exhibition gallery or through cultural events such as conferences, seminars, lectures, workshops, etc. For more information, visit: www.almadinatheatre.com

Riksteatern, established in 1933, is Sweden’s leading nationwide theatre. Our mission is to create mental juxtapositions in many languages in order to set thoughts and feelings in motion. Together with our 40,000 members, Riksteatern is set firmly in tradition, yet at the same time we seek new expressions, new audiences and new artists. For more information, visit: www.riksteatern.se

For more information about the WPI, visit: www.wpinternational.net/