I've been sent an email this week by several people about a playwright competition. I get emails like it all through the year, because I sign up to lists and because people are nice and think it would be good if I entered. I don't think I'd win, even I could enter. But I can't enter.

Competitions mean something in the theatre world. If you win a competition, sometimes it's the only exposure you get. That, and reviews. But a surefire way of getting reviews is by winning a playwright award for "excellence in Australian writing" or for "innovation in theatre" for addressing "issues of concern to Australia" etc. It's all a bit nauseating, but that's how it works.

The prizes are apparently offered to playwrights out of an interest in promoting excellence in Australian writing and revealing interesting things about our national psyche.

Let me be the first to say: what a load of crap.

In order to enter a script in a competition, you have to have done the following with it:

nothing

So, if you have produced the play yourself (because you don't like the idea of your script sitting around in a bottom drawer until someone else discovers it), you're not allowed to enter a script competition.

If you have allowed somebody else to produce the script, whether for stage or radio or in fact reproducing it in any way, you're not allowed to enter a script competition.

If you have agreed to one day in the future possibly allow someone else to produce the play, you're not allowed to enter a competition.

If you have entered the play in another competition, you're not allowed to enter.

So basically, you have to write your play for the competition. You have to submit it months in advance and you have to wait. You aren't allowed to enter it in anything else and you aren't allowed to put it on at the local scout hall.

This is because playwright competitions and funding bodies want to fund interesting and clever Australian pieces that hold a mirror up to society.

Or not.

Maybe it's because they want exclusive rights to put the play on first. I dunno. Just a wild guess.

I've been talking to some writer friends of mine. People who actually do write things that "hold up a mirror to Australia's psyche" and I think they should be able to enter competitions. Under the current rules, Shakespeare would be barred. Yes, I did just compare my friends and myself to Shakespeare. It's one in the morning on a Saturday and I'm getting worked up. I apologise. It won't happen again.