Seeking New Artists!

Competition is Open to Individual Writers, Individual Acting-Teams, Acting-Teams in Schools, Universities and Theaters

by Mahmoud Mansi with Adrian Tawfik

Artists have begun to contact us to get involved after we sent our announcement. We want to say thanks and get the competition fired up! Thanks as well to Tiffany Williams who posted on her popular theater blog and Jonathan Dorf of LA Playwrights too. Other announcements were posted at the Dramatists Guild, NYC Playwrights, Drama Groups, and in the Insights for Playwrights newsletter. Thanks to everyone who has been involved!

The world manages to surprise us with the unexpected, on the personal, political, ecological, economical, artistic and philosophical level. Earth has been transforming rapidly, especially throughout the past five years, and these transformations are getting faster towards unknown destinies.

Many competitions and programs focus on the making of Democracy, Justice, and Equality. However, in this one we are focusing on the complete opposite extreme. We strongly believe that both sides of the coin, the light and the darkness, reality and fiction, do impact us strongly as philosophical artists.

We, the “The Forgotten Writers Foundation” from Egypt and “Democracy Chronicles” from New York, are honored to collaborate together to release “The Seven Dictators Play-writing Competition”.

SEVEN DICTATORS COMPETITION GUIDELINES:

• You can submit your work in two ways:

Either as: An individual writer with your name.

Or as: A theater-acting team, with the team/theater’s name, and the name of the team leader/representative.

• Write a play with a three-act structure ranging from 20 to 35 pages using seven characters of dictators that existed/still exist in the 21st Century, in any possible theme you may wish to put/gather them in.
• During the play, the playwright is free to be creative in any possible way (no limitations) to create their piece.
• The playwright is allowed to add up to three more anonymous characters (not real existing people).
• We expect the writers to reflect and discuss problems in our world through the chosen dictators, and anticipate the dictators’ feelings, thoughts and plans. We expect them to discuss problems that might have happened, still existing, and/or will exist.
• The idea of having seven dictators, is a way for highlighting the idea as a global phenomena, and not only focusing on one country. So we expect the writer to be diversified in intelligent in choosing the characters, and making the blend.
• You are free to choose any genre of horror, fantasy, politics, romance, or any other one.
• Dictators can be people who are non-politicians too. They can be actually in any field. Most Dictators as commonly defined by the society, are tyrants, but actually not all dictators are tyrants. However, we expect you in the very beginning, in the introduction of your play, to write two lines about each dictator you chose, in case he/she is not a very well recognized character worldwide.
• We expect the script to be unexpected, powerful, philosophical, and artistic, with sophisticated ideas, ideologies, beliefs, and settings. We simply ask you as the playwright to create a masterpiece in the realm of literature, something that was never written before, an invention!
• The winning plays will be published in a book under the name of the competition title, and some entries may be performed on stage.
• Do not mention your name inside the word document due to judging purposes.
• Plays should be submitted by email to: 7dictators@democracychronicles.org
• Please include in the email message these details; Your (Home Country, Resident Country, Address, Mobile Number, Profession, And a Bio of 100-150 Words)
• The deadline for all submissions is January 1, 2015.

Judging:

• The winning plays will be chosen on the degree of creativity and the novelty of the idea. Strange and unusual ideas are strongly recommended.

• The depth of the text, characters, places, scene etc.

• The metaphors and similes used.

• The beauty of the writing style and dialogues.

• The ending of the play and how powerful it is.
We strongly believe in you, we believe in this competition, and we believe you can be super inspired by what happened/happens/might happen in our world.

About the Organizers of Seven Dictators:

The Forgotten Writers Foundation:

Based in the ancient city of Alexandria on Egypt’s Nile River, the Forgotten Writers Foundation discusses global, social and humane causes through art. It releases story competitions on topics that were never tackled before through literature, topics that are challenging for writers, interesting and new for readers. See Forgotten Writer’s 2012/2013 play-writing competition results for “Women’s Domination” and the 2011/2012 competition results book publication that collected the submitted plays about ” The Resurrection of Ancient Egypt”.

Democracy Chronicles:

See our About Us page for information on our democracy advocacy and also take a look at our team of contributors at our Author Central. Also, we are working on a documentary that needs support from our readers. Read more about “The Design of a Broken System” documentary at UPDATE: Democracy Chronicles’ Documentary Filming.