all it takes is ONE ACT 2026
Tickets now available!
June 15, 2026 | 7pm
Playwrights Horizons, NYC
The all it takes is ONE ACT Festival will feature readings of the winning plays from A is For’s 2025-26 Playwriting Contest. Read about the plays below!
Casting to be announced soon!
2025-2026 CYCLE WINNERS
First Place-PANDEMONIUM!
by Nancy Sun
As a giant panda, Yiyi’s purpose is to save her species from extinction. And according to her Instagram, it might also be her whole personality :) But after struggling with her fertility for nine years, Yiyi starts to doubt whether her life’s work requires her to bear cubs. When you live in captivity, though, do you really have a say? PANDEMONIUM! is about the hard choices we make in a society that values new life, yet restricts the bodies that make life possible. Inspired by real-world animal conservation efforts, our contemporary reproductive rights discourse, and the chronically online, this play is for those who touch grass and those who should.
Second Place-Omo Mi
by Sadia Alao
Omo Mi follows Amina, a young Nigerian-American girl who has to navigate an unexpected pregnancy and possible abortion while dealing with her overbearing mother, Halima, who is vehemently pro-life. Set over the backdrop of Egungun masquerade and Yoruba mysticism, this story explores the notions we impose on women’s sexual and physical beings and how these impositions ultimately lead to generational hurt.
Third Place-The Ella Elliott Fan Club of Southwest Wisconsin
by Lauren Wimmer
It's 2008 and four high school kids have a fan club for their favorite Christian movie star and singer Ella Elliott. They idolize Ella Elliott for being a pro-life warrior in the liberal Hollywood landscape. From a basement in the suburbs outside of Milwaukee, they work on raising money to have Ella Elliott perform at their church's summer fair. When one of the members becomes pregnant, they must come to terms on what to do. And how.
Meet This Year’s Winners:
-
1st Place
Nancy Sun is a playwright, actor, and queer American daughter of Chinese immigrants. As a storyteller, she centers the narratives of “supporting” characters and makes invisible labor visible. Her play PANDEMONIUM! recently received a developmental workshop at the 2026 Seven Devils New Play Conference, was a Finalist for the 2026 Ojai Playwrights Conference, and a Semifinalist for the 2026 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. At Primary Stages, Nancy is a 2026 Mary Louise Rockwell Scholar and previously a member of their 2024-25 Echoes Writers Group. Finalist: 2026 Under Construction Playwrights Group at Road Theatre; 2025 Target Margin Theatre Institute Fellowship; Semifinalist: 2025 Signpost Fellowship, 2018 SPACE on Ryder Farm Creative Residency. As an actor, Nancy's select stage credits include Junk (Arena Stage), The Hard Problem (Studio Theatre), and Marginal Loss (world premiere, Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville). Onscreen, she has performed in Showtime’s “Homeland,” TVLand’s “Younger,” NBC’s “The Slap,” and the Warner Brothers’ film Going in Style. She is a toddler mom and a dog mom. MFA: Hunter College, 2028. @thenancysun www.thenancysun.com
-
2nd Place
Sadia Alao is a writer and filmmaker from PG County, Maryland whose work often explores Black and African identity, mental health, and the immigrant experience. Her goal is to empower and create space for
underrepresented lives through narrative And visual storytelling. She is a past recipient of Vital Signs: Creative Arts for Black Lives as well as the John Cauble Award for Outstanding Short Play. A few of her credits also include Director of A Long Time Since Yesterday at Georgetown University, Assistant Director of Black Superhero Magic Mama at Strand Theatre, and more. You can view her original film and performance work through her platform, 301Girl Media (sadiaalao.com).
-
3rd Place
Lauren Wimmer writes about loneliness, fear, and death in ways that make people say, "hahaha."
Her plays have been produced or developed at Cave Theatre Co., The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Circle in the Square Theatre & School, Vineyard Arts Project, Dixon Place, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Panndora Productions, The Tank, Play by Play, The Cell, A Collective Artists, The Dramatists Guild, PlayGround-NY, Irondale, Imaginarium Theatre Company, Mid-America Theatre Conference, Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival, Theater For The New City, Swarm Artist Residency, The Workshop Theater, Campfire Theatre Festival, Ars Nova's ANT Fest, Theatre Evolve, The Annoyance, Theater Masters, The Bechdel Group, Possibilities Theatre Company, and Mildred's Umbrella Theater Company.
Lauren's a member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and The Playwright Entrepreneur Program at PlayPenn. She's been a Playwrights’ Center Core Apprentice and Sitka Fellow. Her work's been published by Samuel French. Additionally, she’s been a finalist for the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Award, a semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award, and a nominee for the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award at Williamstown Theatre Festival.
Lauren is a graduate of The Second City's Conservatory and Writing programs. She received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University where she was the recipient of the Mary Marlin Fisher Playwriting Award and the Jean & Samuel Elgart ACS Legacy Fellowship.
Why a Playwriting Contest?
It’s not just abortion that is stigmatized in our culture, but the entire lived experiences of people who seek to fulfill their promise as autonomous human beings, realize their own dreams, raise their families in safety and peace, pursue their ambitions, and maintain control over their physical and reproductive lives.
The subject of reproductive justice is one too often simplified by our current dialogues. And too often the voices and perspectives of the people most affected by restrictions, legislative prohibitions, and cultural prejudices are excluded from our artistic institutions.
A is For seeks to change that. We believe that theatre is a powerful platform through which to share stories, debunk myths, and create lasting change. We believe that theatre can transform. We want to challenge the abstract, politicized, and stigmatized ways people think about abortion and reproductive justice. We want to amplify voices that can reframe the conversation. We want to support and promote artists who can dispel myths and misconceptions. We want to hear the stories you want to tell.
In that spirit, the stories we hope to bring to the fore will be diverse in perspective as well as imagination. These plays may be personal and realistic, or they may be allegorical. They may be fantastic, sprung from dreams, or they may be grounded in naturalism. From the surrealist, to the literal. From magical realism, to documentarian. Whatever form or shape they may take, we hope to receive a wide range of works from all over the country, reflecting the great variety of experiences that reproductive justice demands we all recognize.
In highlighting these stories, we’re broadening the emotional vocabulary of the American audience, and opening up our theaters to a fuller and more honest exploration of the human experience.
Information about the contest:
Submissions were accepted through Saturday, January 31, 2026 11:59PM EST.
A qualified team of accomplished theatre and reproductive justice professionals will read and assess all entries.
Winners will be announced in the late Spring of 2026.
Only the three winners and seven runners up will be contacted directly by A is For once the jury has made its decisions. Please make sure you are on our mailing list and follow us on socials to stay updated.
Grand Prize will be awarded to one play which will receive $5,000.
The Second Place winner will be awarded $3,000, and the Third Place winner will be awarded $1,500. Only the top three plays will win monetary awards, but we will announce and post the top ten plays on our website with appropriate links.
All three winning plays will be presented as staged readings during our festival in late Spring 2026, exact date and location tbd.
Rules for Entry:
Submit one-act plays no longer than 90 minutes in length about reproductive justice, including (but not limited to) the topic of abortion.
If you have a full-length (or longer one-act) that you wish to submit, we recommend you submit a cutting of your choice that is no longer than 90 minutes in length. We will disqualify any material that is longer than 90 minutes.
Because we often get a lot of questions about this, the reason we have this rule is that our goal is to celebrate and amplify a variety of voices. Each year we celebrate three plays. We just don’t have the bandwidth or resources to accommodate the presentation of three plays, each potentially longer than 90 minutes, in one day. In the future we hope to expand the scope of this contest, but for the moment, we need to maintain these limits. Thank you for understanding.
Plays can be shorter than 90 minutes! They can be as short as a single page if you feel that’s sufficient to tell your story. Our winning play last year was 11 pages.
Please include a cover page that lists the name of the playwright, and all relevant contact information, including professional representation, if applicable.
While you may not edit your entry after it is submitted, you may delete that entry and re-submit. But once the judging period begins, you will not be able to delete or edit your entry.
You may submit as many plays as you wish.
Please submit your plays (PDF only) on Award Force.Please do NOT email copies of your play directly to A is For. Plays will not be accepted by email.
Plays in languages other than English will be accepted as long as an accompanying English translation is also provided.
We will accept plays from anywhere in the world.
We will accept plays from playwrights of all ages.
We will not accept plays that have already been produced and/or are already published.
Should your play win one of the top three awards, it will be included in an anthology published by A is For which will be sold to benefit the programs of A is For. Entry to this contest implies consent for your play to be published in such an anthology. Playwrights will retain all copyrights to their material.
Prohibited from entry is any individual who:
is a Contest Judge, or an A is For Board or Staff member.
employs a Contest Judge, or an A is For Board or Staff member as an employee or agent.
owns or controls an entity for whom a Contest Judge, or an A is For Board or Staff member is an employee, officer, director, or agent.
has a material business or financial relationship with any Contest Judge, or an A is For Board or Staff member.
is a member of any immediate family of Contest Judge, or an A is For Board or Staff member.
For purposes hereof, the members of an individual’s immediate family include such individual’s spouse or domestic partner, children and step-children, parents and step-parents, and siblings and step-siblings.
All rules above are applied uniformly, but are void where prohibited by law.
We do require that you fill out the demographic questionnaire in order to complete your submission. Your answers help us to hold ourselves accountable for reaching as diverse a group of people as possible. You may select “prefer not to answer” for any question you are uncomfortable answering, but we do require that you complete the questionnaire for your entry to be considered.