Since its inception, the Worldwide Plays festival has produced live theatrical productions of plays written in workshops at Writopia’s labs across the country and plays submitted to our competition from playwrights around the world!
Comedies, musicals, monologues, historical dramas, tear-jerkers, and thought pieces—all written by the talented young playwrights of tomorrow.
Location(s)
- Remote
Schedule
Cost/Compensation
- Free
Eligibility Requirements
Setting
- Each year, the festival is themed after different settings that each play must take place in. Recent themes have included "In a Field" and "Out of this World."
Characters
- Plays should have no more than three characters. Please include a character breakdown at the top of your play. In the breakdown, you can be as specific as you’d like about their demographics (age, ethnicity, gender, etc.) or as general or magical as you’d like (Carl is a fish).
Genre
- The play can be any genre—comedy, drama, horror, polemic, tragedy, historical, docudrama, solo play, interactive, sci-fi, musical, or anything you dream up.
Format
- There is no standard playwriting format. Feel free to use the Writopia Lab Playwriting Format as a model, if that works for you.
Narrators
- There can be no narrator of the play who is not emotionally invested in the story. (i.e. Ramona can tell her story to the audience, but an unnamed narrator cannot tell her story to the audience.)
Length
- Plays should be no longer than eight minutes in length. With dialogue, that evens out to about one minute per page. However, if you have longer monologues or speeches, it might be less. One way to make sure it doesn’t go over eight minutes is to read it aloud by yourself or with friends and time the reading.
Deadline
- Mid February
Application or Entry Requirements
Notifications of Decisions
Financial Aid Details
Other Dates to Keep in Mind
Have other questions?
Writopia Lab is a creative writing program based in New York City that offers workshops, classes, and camps for young writers in grades K-12, with a focus on helping students develop their writing skills in a variety of genres, including fiction, poetry, and playwriting. Writopia Lab has served over 20,000 students since its founding in 2007 and has been recognized for its innovative approach to writing education, including being named one of the top 50 after-school programs in the United States by the National AfterSchool Association.
