As the Royal Shakespeare Company celebrates the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio in 2023, the Company has announced the opening of submissions for its new nationwide playwriting competition 37 Plays: an ambitious and ground-breaking new initiative open to anybody from anywhere in the UK.

37 Plays is led by the RSC and its network of 12 regional theatre partners and seeks to capture and write the stories of our nation. It is open to children, young people and adults, including established, emerging and first-time writers.

Submissions open at 12noon on Tuesday 3 January and close at 12noon on Saturday 31 January. Those wishing to submit a play can do so by visiting submit.37plays.co.uk

Submitted plays will be read by a national panel of 25 readers, selected by the RSC’s theatre partners to reflect the nation in all of its diversity.

37 Plays is open to anyone in the UK who wants to submit a play with the simple brief of creating a piece of drama that can make people laugh, smile, cry or think.

The project will explore who we are as a society and inspire conversation about what the future of dramatic writing might look and feel like, on and off our stages.

Play submissions divide into three age categories of up to 11 years old, 12 to 17 years old and 18 years old and above. Multi-authored plays may nominate a lead writer or average age of writers.

Submitted plays must be predominantly written in English, or in British Sign Language, with a translation provided for any text not in English language. Entries must not be less than one A4 page and cannot be more than a hundred A4 pages. Plays must be a complete original story, not a sample of a story or an adaptation of a story. Submitted plays must not have had a professional production or be under commission at the time of submission.

All of the 37 plays selected will be awarded a fee for publication, performance and/or broadcast. Any submission subsequently commissioned for production will be subject to usual commission processes approved by the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain.

Full details can be found via 37plays.co.uk