November Playwriting Challenge 2024 final numbers and payout info :)

Hi all

Thanks, once more, for your patience, but here in the first week of February 2025 we here at Threshold Theater are finally tying up the last of the loose ends on the November Playwriting Challenge for 2024.

We started this year (well, 2024, so I guess last year at this point) with a new high of 101 playwrights signing up for the challenge.
(As a point of comparison, in our first year back in 2021, we had 49 playwrights sign up.
In 2022, there was a glitch in posting the opportunity so we had a late start getting the word out, and we had just 40 playwrights sign up.
In 2023, we had our record (at the time) of 57 playwrights sign up.)

The number of playwrights writing all 30 days of November 2024 was 64.
(2021 it was 27 playwrights, 2022 it was 22 playwrights, and 2023 it was 38 playwrights.)

The average number of playwrights overall across the whole month of November 2024 submitting work each day was 77 playwrights a day.
(2021 it was 34 playwrights, 2022 it was 27 playwrights, 2023 it was 47 playwrights.)

The high mark of playwrights submitting work in a single day in November 2024 was 88 playwrights.
(2021’s high mark was 44 playwrights submitting work in a single day, 2022’s high mark was 33 playwrights, and 2023’s high mark was 54 playwrights.)

The lowest number of playwrights submitting work during a single day in November 2024 was 68 playwrights (you’ll notice that the low ebb in 2024 was well above the high watermark of 2021 through 2023 listed in the previous paragraph)
(2021’s day with the lowest number of submissions was 29 playwrights, 2022’s low mark was only 23 playwrights submitting work in a day, and 2023’s was 42 playwrights)

In November 2024, playwrights submitted 2,288 different pieces of work, totaling 8,511 pages of dialogue, or the equivalent of 70 full-length plays at 120 pages each (or more than 2 plays a day each day of the month), with another 111 leftover pages, which is basically just a 71st full-length play in my opinion.

(2021, there were 1,004 bits of script, totaling 4,090 pages, the equivalent of 34 full-length plays of 120 pages each, plus another 10 leftover pages for a bonus 10 minute play.
2022, 808 pieces of script, 2,593 pages, the equivalent of 21 full-length plays, plus 73 leftover pages for another one-act.
2023, 1,392 script bits, 4,066 pages, the equivalent of 33 full-length plays, plus 106 leftover pages which, again, might as well just be a 34th full-length play)

So you all basically doubled the output of previous years.  A most impressive explosion of creativity for 30 days.  Well done.

As I’ve stated in previous posts and emails, the enthusiasm for the challenge in November caught us a bit by surprise.  It was a big leap forward from the previous three years.  We’ll be trying out automating submissions with a Google form in November 2025 so I’m no longer trying to manage that manually, and I can focus on a more timely response to playwright questions and crises as they arise.  Again, thank you all for the patience this year.  That, and your dogged output of new pages of dialogue, whether it was in response to prompts, or using the daily deadline to work on projects of your own, or something else completely random, it was inspiring to see (if sometimes also a bit overwhelming - but it’s the way we like to be overwhelmed, the more playwrights the better, the more new work for the theater the better.  So you keep on going and we’ll scramble behind you if we need to in order to catch up :)

Threshold Theater’s managing director has the list of contact information for who and where to mail the checks to those playwrights who wrote all 30 days of the month of November.  Checks should be out the door by mid-week this week, post office says figure 7 to 10 days to receive the mail, depending on where you’re located.  It’ll be in a plain white envelope with Threshold Theater as the return address, so keep an eye out for that and just deposit the check at your earliest convenience.

We had to follow up with a dozen folks who didn’t get back to us right away confirming their information so that slowed things down a bit (after my challenges with processing the playwriting output from November slowed things down quite a bit already :) But the payout is at last in process. The share of the money put into the kitty at the beginning of the process for each 30 day playwright turned out to be $19, so basically those folks got their $15 fee back again, plus a few bucks extra.  30 days of writing prompts and creativity for free.  Not bad.

Again, thank you all again for participating in Threshold Theater’s November Playwriting Challenge.  It was good to receive all your messages saying how useful it was to your process.  I hope you all have plenty of raw material to refine and rework over the coming year, and that you get some of it out into the wider world in response to submission calls and competitions from theaters.

We’ll be back again with a new, more streamlined and speedy process this fall, and the same daily writing prompts and daily deadlines you’ve come to expect from us.

Happy writing to you all!

Stay safe and be well.

Matthew Everett
Literary Director
Threshold Theater
(he/him/his)

Coming Up...

Spring 2025
The world premiere production of my play "Spellbound" with Threshold Theater
A play about the wrong way to use a love potion.
April 18 to May 3, 2025
At the Phoenix Theater, 2605 Hennepin Ave. Minneapolis
https://www.thresholdtheatermpls.com/
Directed by Denzel Belin
Thanks to his mischievous friend Jeffrey (David Schlosser), who’s begun dabbling in witchcraft, Micah (Zakary Morton) has accidentally dosed his best friend Auggie (Leor Benjamin) with a love potion. Which might be fine, if Auggie wasn’t straight, and married, or if Auggie’s wife Sarah (Keira Kowal Jett) wasn’t pregnant, or a practicing witch. With the help of Duncan (Xae Copeland), who runs the local metaphysical supply store, the race is on to whip up the antidote before anyone does something they’ll regret.

Now Playing:
The video recording of Threshold Theater's Pride Month new play reading of "Monster Girls at Sunshine Donuts" by Dani Herd: A vampire, a werewolf, and a Frankenstein's monster walk into a doughnut shop... Meet Louise, Tally, and Elsie: the crew behind Sunshine Doughnuts! The ghouls have fallen into a pretty pleasant spooky routine for themselves; pouring coffee, baking doughnuts, arguing over Scooby-Doo cartoons, having crushes on their regulars. Along comes an unexpected late night visitor to throw everything into question. Sometimes it really sucks how much your past can come back to bite you!  Now on our YouTube channel - https://youtu.be/sWMauIx2L94?si=V_5BPilbotR1eGll


"Write. Find a way to keep alive and write. There is nothing else to say."
- James Baldwin

"Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way."
- E.L. Doctorow