The Voaden Prize

Who was Herman Voaden?

Herman Voaden (1903-1991) graduated from Queen’s University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1923, followed by a Master of Arts in 1926. He was a Canadian playwright, director, and theatrical innovator and was a lifelong champion of Canadian culture. Herman Voaden was one of the most significant playwrights in Canada prior to the Second World War. Voaden championed a multimedia form of theatre that he called “Symphonic Expression” that integrated artistic lighting effects, “sprach-stimmung,” music, dance, and unusual sets. He was the head of the Canadian Arts Council (1945-1948), The Canadian Conference of the Arts (1966-1968), and the Canadian Guild of Crafts (1968-1970). He received the Order of Canada in 1974.

Entry Guidelines

• Open to any Canadian citizen or permanent resident.
• Only one play per playwright.
• Only full-length plays in English will be accepted. Legal clearance of all adapted material not in the public domain is the responsibility of the playwright. For the purposes of this competition, “full-length” is defined as a play with an estimated run time of one hour or longer.
• Plays cannot have been previously produced, published, contracted, or commissioned by a professional theatre.
• The First Prize-winning playwright will be given a professional three-day workshop of their winning script in fall 2025 at Queen’s University and a public staged reading of the play, followed by a talk-back session. The winning playwright will be invited to attend, and may be asked to appear as a guest, in some classes offered by the DAN School of Drama and Music. The workshop will also be open to attendance by students of the DAN School of Drama and Music. By entering the competition, the playwright agrees to this provision.
• The First and Second Prize-winning plays may be distributed to some classes at the DAN School of Drama and Music in the 2025 Fall term to supplement the curriculum. By entering the competition, the playwright agrees to this provision.

Submission Procedure

• Submissions will be accepted from December 15, 2024, to February 15, 2025, with the winners announced in June 2025.
• Prior to submitting your script for consideration, please pay the entry fee of $65 CAD (per submitted play) by Visa or MasterCard only through the secure event page. 
• Once the entry fee payment is confirmed, please submit one PDF copy of the play being entered. Scripts will only be accepted through email. Send entries to jms31@queensu.ca and include contact information and the payment confirmation email from each entry fee paid.
• The playwright’s name must not appear anywhere in the text of the entry, only on the Entry Payment Form. The preferred font is Times or Courier in 12-point size. The pages of the document should be numbered in the header or footer. The PDF should be saved with only the title as the file name (e.g. AMidsummerNightsDream.pdf). 
• We are no longer accepting musicals, although plays that include incidental music are welcome. Entries involving music should be accompanied by an MP3 file of the recorded music and lyrics. Sheet music will also be accepted, but please ensure that all reference to the composer, lyricist and/or playwright is excluded from the submission. 
• Entries are handled with care and confidentiality, but the Dan School of Drama and Music cannot assume responsibility for lost or damaged files. Receipt of entry will be confirmed by a reply email. 

Adjudication

There are three rounds. A distinct group of adjudicators judges each round. All plays are read blind (e.g., without knowledge of the author; adjudicators who are familiar with a script should recuse themselves and trade that script for another).

Results

The DAN School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University is proud to announce the winners of the 2025 Herman Voaden National Playwriting Competition:

First Place, $10,000 – Christine Foster for Come and Find Me

Runner Up, $5,000 – Lindsey Bourne for Mabel’s Mine

Honourable Mentions – David Brock for Funny Bird and Celia McBride for Lessons From Providence

Christine Foster's plays have been seen in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Mexico, Korea and the US, as have dozens of scripts for CBS, CBC, and Family Channel.

Her black comedy, Four Thieves Vinegar, ran in London in 2017 and sold out at the 2019 Brighton Fringe, while Lost in the Willows, a bioplay about Kenneth Grahame toured the UK. In 2022, Off the Map, a finalist in the Woodward/Newman New Play Competition, won the Susan Glaspell Award and premiered at Centenary Stage, New Jersey in 2023, the same year that Bess - The Other Houdini, the story of the widow of the great magician, ran to four-star reviews in London.

In 2024 The Lemon Golf Diary, a tale of undiagnosed neurodivergence, was published and won Best Novella in The Literary Global Book Awards.

www.christinefoster.ca

Lyndsey Bourne is a playwright, educator, and doula. Her plays have been presented and developed with The Tank, La MaMa, New Georges, The Hearth, Ojai Playwrights Conference, New York Stage and Film, Judson, Rattlestick Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Ars Nova, Playwrights Horizons, The Mercury Store, Manhattan Theater Club, The Civilians, Page 73 and The Public Theater among others.

She currently teaches Writing and Devising for Performance at Playwrights Horizons Theater School (NYU Tisch Drama) and practices beekeeping at her community garden in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Lyndsey is a member of the Obie award winning writers group Youngblood/EST, a resident artist and member of Ars Nova’s Play Group, a member of The Civilian’s 2024-2025 R and D group, a member of Page 73’s 2025 writers group, a New Georges affiliated artist, a member of the New Georges Jam, a 2022 New Georges Audrey Resident, a 2022 Writer in Residence at The Ojai Playwrights Conference, a 2021 Artist in Residence at SPACE on Ryder Farm, the recipient of a 2020 NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theater Grant and a MacDowell Fellow.

Born and raised in North Vancouver and Penticton, BC, Lyndsey is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. BFA NYU, MFA Brooklyn College (with Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney).