Congratulations to Drew Davis, winner of our 2011 Thornton Wilder Playwriting Contest!

Drew’s play The Message, adapted from Wilder’s playlet The Message and Jehanne reveals the motive behind the mix-up that yields such dramatic results in Wilder’s story.

More to follow on the play’s upcoming publication and world premiere.

Drew Davis is a freelance writer in the Augusta, Georgia area and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and the American Association of Community Theatre. His plays have been produced in San Diego, Chicago, and the southeast including Atlanta, as well as Cheshire, England. Two of his short stories were published in the western anthology Award Winning Tales. His one-act The Message is the 2011 Thornton Wilder Playwriting Contest winner.

Thornton Wilder Playwriting Contest

Last spring, Playscripts, Inc. partnered with the Thornton Wilder Estate to launch a contest based on Thornton Wilder’s playlets.

Writers were invited to choose from 12 of the following three-minute Wilder gems and use this play as a foundation to create their own expanded adaptation:

Nascuntur Poetae
Proserpina and the Devil
Fanny Otcott
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
The Penny that Beauty Spent
Brother Fire
The Angel on the Ship
The Message and the Jehanne
Centaurs
Leviathan
Christmas Interludes II
Flamingo Red

You can read all of the playlets here.

Judges for final round included: Ken Ludwig (Playwright, Lend Me A Tenor, Crazy for You); Julie Vatain (Translator/adapter and professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris); Jackson Bryer (Thornton Wilder Society President).

Note: The Playlets listed above are in the public domain. It is therefore not necessary to seek permission to perform or publish works based on these plays.