Penguin launches The Big Break competition
from WEBWIRE – Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Penguin Books and The National Theatre Discover Programme announce The Big Break young scriptwriting competition.

Young people nationwide aged 13 to 18 are invited to read award-winning author Meg Rosoff’s debut novel How I Live Now and take the story, themes and characters as a starting point to create a treatment and the first scene of a script.

Five winners will be invited to spend a day at the National Theatre Studio working with professional writers, National Theatre directors and actors to workshop and develop their scripts. They will also see a performance of Nation, based on a novel by Terry Pratchett, adapted by Mark Ravenhill, opening at the National Theatre in November 2009.

The judging panel consists of author Meg Rosoff, playwright Mark Ravenhill, associate director (literary) of the National Theatre Sebastian Born, associate director of the National Theatre Discover Programme Anthony Banks and editor of Penguin’s teen online book community spinebreakers.co.uk Danielle Innes.

The competition will live on Penguin’s teen book website Spinebreakers and the National Theatre’s Discover website. There will be multi-media resources available to young people on both websites which give tools and advice on how to adapt a book for the stage, alternative ways for laying out a script and what the National Theatre and Penguin are looking for in successful submissions.
On Spinebreakers teens have the opportunity to discuss, debate and interact with a rich source of publishing from contemporary titles such as Nick Hornby’s Slam to classics such as J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Kerouac’s On the Road.
Meg Rosoff’s debut novel How I Live Now (published by Penguin, 2004) won the Guardian and Branford Boase Awards and was short-listed for the Orange Prize for New Fiction as well as the Whitbread.