competition
What is it?
The Wildfire National Playwriting Competition is a free opportunity for young Canadian playwrights.
We want to read awesome plays and we are willing to offer cash money!
We are looking for playwrights 30 years of age or under to submit fresh, young scripts that embrace risk, grit and innovation.
Submitting a play to the competition is free and the two winning scripts selected by our jury receive a cash prize, a development workshop, and a public sharing at MMMC’s Wildfire Showcase in association with Sage Theatre’s IGNITE! Festival.
Why do this competition?
We are a scrappy little company that believes the conversation between young theatre artists is vital in order for fresh, exciting theatre to continue in this country.
Over the seven years the competition has run we have awarded over $7,500 to young playwrights across the country and helped develop thirteen winning plays.
Since 2015 we have kept this competition free to make it more accessible to playwrights from all backgrounds and stages of their career
The first six years of these awards were solely funded by house parties, online crowd sourcing, and the support of the Sage Theatre.
We are now blessed with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts to continue to offer this competition free to playwrights.
Thank you to everyone who has helped support Wildfire over the years, we quite literally couldn't do it without you.
Okay! How do I apply?
Submissions for 2025 are now closed.
Congratulations to our 2025 Wildfire winners!
First place - Ships in the Night by Ameer Idreis
Ameer Idreis is a Palestinian-Canadian writer, playwright, and urbanist who tells stories about culture, land, and self-discovery. Writing across form and genre, he has penned books, essays, poetry, and stories for the stage. His debut play ‘Ships in the Night’ won a Playwrights Guild of Canada Tom Hendry Award. He is also the co-founder and Creative Director of in draft co. — an arts collective supporting emerging writers. When he’s not writing, you can find him enjoying a flat white, curating niche playlists, and exploring Toronto’s neighbourhoods.
Ships in the Night
When Omar, a Palestinian editorial assistant, meets Isaac, a Jewish photographer, their date is complicated by their intersecting histories. Omar carries the trauma of the Nakba in his blood, Isaac holds an Israeli passport from his Birthright trip, and the ghosts of 1948 Haifa play out their own story against a backdrop of escalating war, displacement, and exile. With urgent, tender wit, Ships in the Night explores how political realities shape personal ones and the limits of love in bridging seemingly irreconcilable divides.
Second place - Naked Frankenstein by Jackson Lee Thompson
Jackson Lee Thompson is a divisor, playwright, actor and director from Edmonton Alberta. They have performed in Sorry not Sorry, U.I.G, Rapid Fire and Shame!’s improv ensembles. They founded Out of Body Performing Arts with Baird Duncan where they are the Director of Public Relations and production manager for the Out of Body's Review Series and Cold Reads. They have co-produced many original and devised productions in Out of Body including: The Waves (2022, 2024), BOO! Cabaret (2023-ongoing), My Dinner with Arby (2024), and The Public Domain Festival (2025).
Naked Frankenstein
Two doctors contend with artificial life and loneliness. 25 people are denied death. A guy getting a vasectomy lands an awful job. A woman discovers she is, in fact, a saint.
Here’s a list of our previous competition winners:
2023
First place
Anais Mateusz West - Tomboy (Chłopczyca)
Second place
Mercedes Isaza Clunie - Gringas
2021
First place
Julie Phan 潘家雯 - CPC Barbie
Second place
Makram Ayache – The Hooves Belonged to the Deer
2020
First place
Claudia Kulay - happy now
Second place
Mallory Fisher - inheritance: a motherskin
2019
First place
Morgan Grau - Absolute F*cking Mayhem
Second Place
Jesse LaVercombe - Hallelujah, It's Holly
2017
First place
David Gagnon Walker - Gobbledygobbledygook
Second place
Frances Koncan - zahgidiwin/love
2016
First place
Mx Sly - Serenity Wild
Second place
Chelsea Woolley - The Exhibition of Extraordinary Oddities and Living Freaks
2015
First place
Elena Belyea - Cleave
Second place
Michaela Jeffery - Always
