Submissions

Eligibility

The ASC accepts professionally written, production-ready performance scripts for stage and radio across a range of styles and genres. We only accept work by Australian writers and encourage playwrights at all stages of their career to submit their plays to us, provided that the work meets the following eligibility criteria:

  • You hold publication rights; in other words, the script has not been exclusively licensed to another publisher

AND at least one of the following;

  • The play has received or is contracted to receive a professional production or workshop (or a school or youth theatre production if that is more appropriate for the work), or
  • The play has been recommended to us by a script development agency or professional theatre company, or
  • The play has won or been shortlisted for a major prize, or
  • The play is written by an established playwright

Please note that, while we do not accept musicals (where all or nearly all the text is sung), we do accept plays with music (where most of the text is dialogue, with occasional songs).

 

Selection criteria

It is important to note that eligibility does not guarantee acceptance. Only a relatively small proportion of scripts submitted are accepted into the catalogue and it is completely at the Centre's discretion to reject scripts which are not considered to rate sufficiently highly against the selection criteria.

Eligible scripts are assessed against the following criteria;

  • Literary merit, understood to encompass writing ability, style, skilled use of language, appropriateness of form, stagecraft, characterisation, clarity of expression and sustained development of themes or ideas.
  • Potential to engage the intended audience

 

Submit a script

Script submissions are received electronically either by email or on CD ROM. Your submission must include the following;

  • The submission form, completed and saved in a Word document,
  • The full script in Word format. Please ensure that it has been CAREFULLY PROOFREAD AND PAGINATED,
  • A synopsis in Word (200 words maximum)
  • Playwright biography in Word. The synopsis and biography may be in the same document or separate.
  • For plays with music, please include the lyrics within the script. Do not include the sheet music or any recordings in your initial submission. If your play is accepted you will be asked to provide us with the sheet music (sent as a pdf document), and an mp3 audio file of one song, if available.

In addition, we encourage the inclusion of some or all of the following support material;

  • Playwright photo (jpg) for inclusion on website
  • Production image/s (jpg) for inclusion on website. Please include photo credit and identify performers for all production images
  • Any reviews or other support materials available in electronic format

Submissions may be emailed to admin@ozscript.org or posted in CD ROM format to:

The Australian Script Centre
77 Salamanca Place
Hobart, TAS 7004

We aim for a fast turnaround but it’s not always possible. You should allow up to six weeks for your submission to be assessed. You will be advised of the outcome by email.

Submission fee

A one-off fee of $33 (incl. gst) is payable per accepted script. The fee goes towards costs involved in formatting, uploading and managing access to, and sales of the script. The fee becomes payable upon acceptance of a script. An invoice will be issued with advice of acceptance.

The submission fee is waived for plays which have won a major playwriting award (eg the Griffin Award, Patrick White Playwrights' Award, an AWGIE etc) and in other certain circumstances at the sole discretion of the Script Centre.

Important notes

We do not accept scripts without signed permission from copyright holders. Your script must not include material that you do not have permission to use. If it has been previously published but is now out of print, we ask you to provide confirmation in writing that the rights have reverted to you.

The ASC does not provide a script development or editing service and we cannot accept scripts that do not meet a professional standard. This includes scripts that have not been properly proofread, paginated or checked for other mistakes. Scripts should be clearly formatted and easy to read. If you are unsure of an appropriate format, see the sample script format below.

Any questions? Please email us: info@ozscript.org, or telephone +61 (0)3 6223 4675.