UPTOWN — To help amplify the voices of transgender, queer and gender non-conforming communities, Pride Films and Plays has a new contest to find the next great trans play.
The contest is exclusively open to playwrights who are transgender, gender queer, gender fluid, non-binary or otherwise gender non-conforming, referred to as "trans*" by Pride Films and Plays.
The Great Trans* Play Contest seeks to "specifically encourage new stories touching the trans* community and its members which are told with authentic trans* voices," the company said.
The winner will receive a cash award and will develop the play in a week-long rehearsal workshop with Delia Kropp, a transgender actress. Two public staged readings will then take place at the Pride Arts Center in Uptown, home of Pride Films and Plays.
Two finalists will also receive a cash award and a recorded reading of their work by Chicago actors.
Submissions are due April 16, and there is a $45 entry fee for those who aren't Dramatists Guild members.
The contest serves as the 2017 version of the company's Great Gay Play And Musical Contest, which has taken place annually since 2010.
Pride Films and Plays found a new home at the former Profiles Theatre last summer after a Reader investigation into allegations of abusive behavior forced Profiles to cease operations.
Since setting up shop at 4139 N. Broadway and 4147 N. Broadway in Uptown, the Pride Arts Center has hosted staged readings of short plays written in response to the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando and debuted a one-man play by drag legend Charles Busch.
While television shows like "Orange is the New Black" and "Transparent" have taken steps to change media representation of the trans community, it's rare to have accurate and positive portrayals in media, activists say.
More than half of transgender characters on television are negatively represented, with 80 percent of the episodes casting the transgender characters in one-dimensional roles of victims, villains or sex workers, according to a 2014 GLAAD study.
Anti-transgender slurs and dialogue were present in at least 60 percent of the 102 episodes and storylines featuring a transgender character from 2002 to 2014, according to GLAAD.
In real life, transgender people face twice the rate of poverty in the United States, with three times the poverty rate for transgender people of color. Homelessness, suicide and limited access to healthcare are other issues transgender people face.
Unemployment is three times higher than the average population, and 30 percent of respondents in a 2015 survey said they were fired, denied a promotion or otherwise experienced mistreatment related to their gender identity or expression.
