{The Play Press} specialises in publishing new New Zealand plays, both to preserve a range of quality scripts and to make texts more accessible for rehearsal and study. We are interested in all types of playscript and any other performance related work.

{The Play Press} grew out of *The Women's Play Press collective, which was formed in 1994 by Lorae Parry, Viv Plumb, Fiona Samuel, Cathy Downes and Jean Betts. WPP was formed initially to publish plays of ours performed in 1993 in a festival we organised to celebrate the centenary of women's suffrage in NZ. Since then, several of our plays have had excellent sales, productions nationally and abroad, and inclusion in school and university curricula. (All enquiries regarding The Women's Play Press plays are welcome.) However in 2001, feeling that there were still too many very good scripts languishing unpublished that needed to be made available, I established {The Play Press} as well.

However {The Play Press} retains its special commitment to women’s plays and as The Women’s Play Press sponsors an entry into The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize each year, choosing the best woman’s play from the Adam NZ Play Award (formerly the Playmarket New Play Award) entries.

It's sometimes hard to get playwrights to see the importance of play publishing; perhaps because we have long accepted theatre's ephemeral nature and any desire for 'permanence' seems unnatural; perhaps because of the difficulties we imagine adapting a production to the page. However, there's a very low demand for photocopies of a play manuscript. Once published, as well as magically assuming new dignity, status and permanence, a play becomes accessible, included in libraries, curricula (it generally won't be studied unless it's published), and made available worldwide - so there is a greatly increased potential for it to be licensed for productions. Quite simply it can also ensure that playscripts are not lost forever (the last known copy of Frangipani Perfume was found down the back of someone's sofa). It's worth noting too that there is a variety of fellowships and writing grants only open to 'published' writers.

{The Play Press} has had a great deal of support, especially from Creative New Zealand, Playmarket, Daphne Brasell, Dilys Grant, Anton Carter, John McDavitt, Tim Jordan, Anna Cameron, Joe and Charlie Bleakley, Fane Flaws, David O'Donnell, Lloyd Hackel and Elizabeth Barrett-Hackel and generous friends.

Jean Betts