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 2023 Herman Voaden National Playwriting Competition:

First Place, $10,000 – Brandon Zang for Ah Wing and the Automaton Eagle 

Runner Up, $5,000 – Alexander Steele Zonjic  for Community Standards or (Move Fast and Break Things) 

Honourable Mentions – Marie Beath Badian for Common: A Trilogy and Peter Zednik for Toccata and Fugue

First Prize Winner Brandon Zang (he/him) is a sci-fi and fantasy playwright who uses worldbuilding to distance, deconstruct, and dissect the complex issues of today. An immigrant from Tianjin, China, Brandon's plays are often stories about longing & belonging, beautiful nightmares, and trying your best. He is currently completing his MFA in playwriting at Boston University under the mentorship of Nathan Alan Davis, Ronan Noone, and Melinda Lopez, and he holds a BA from the University of Chicago. Check out Brandon’s work on New Play Exchange and his website brandonzang.com.  

Second Prize Winner Alexander Steele Zonjic is an emerging playwright, producer and actor. He is also a frightened, anxious millennial with no social media presence and a good poker face. At 8 years old burglars ransacked his family home in Windsor, Ontario, while he slept, and ever since then he’s been afraid to wake up to find his world unjustly changed, and his place within it uncertain. In his free time he enjoys wrestling with the quotidian concerns and controversies of the present (and how they may repeat the past or reshape our future), a bright-night-light (due to aforementioned home invasion), and struggling to balance a good sense of humour with an overwhelming sense of doom. Through the theatre he seeks to understand, embrace and face his fears by endeavouring to engage in uncomfortable conversations in the name of truth and growth, practicing vulnerability in his thoughts and feelings, being brave enough to have his mind changed in public, and potentially say the wrong thing. Championing the ugly and the honest, Alexander hopes to create work that challenges, while also inspiring transformative justice, empathy, and a will to live together. Alexander is a graduate of the Ryerson Theatre School where he was awarded the Lou Taube Memorial Award and has also studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and Ecole Philippe Gaulier. His debut play Enola Gay earned him the Robert Beardsley Award for Emerging Playwrights from the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and an Honourable Mention in the Herman Voaden National Playwriting Competition 2021.