Sam, your 2008 Frenzy script won the 53rd Annual Stanley Drama Award. Tell us more!


I've been writing plays for about fifteen years, though I'd never show any of my early scripts to anyone for any reason. I wrote a lot in college, and won some college level awards - ACTF and ATHE, in the late 1990's. After college, I kept writing, but it was an uphill battle, and about five years ago I just plain stopped. Half of that was disillusionment with theater in general, and half of it was that I was working on a Masters degree and raising two kids with my lovely wife. I kept kicking around this idea for a full-length play, but had no reason to write it, until I heard about Script Frenzy. I figured I'd give it a shot, and see if having a deadline would be just the nudge I needed to get the whole thing written down. Of course it was, and the result was a play called Memory Fragments.

Memory Fragments is a two-act cyberpunk mystery thriller based on the premise that in the near future people will be able to record their memories directly, in 3D, for playback later. So of course, if someone gets murdered, their memory fragments would be the first place detectives look for clues. Anyway, I spent a few months tightening it up and then started sending it out to contests.

In March, I learned that the script had won the Stanley Drama Award! So, this week my wife and I traveled to New York to accept the prize of 2,000 dollars. We’re back now, and soooooooo tired! But I had just about the best time ever in my whole life. Winning this award has been a real boost to my playwriting energies, and I hope to keep the momentum going with more plays and more submissions. (Oh, and of course I made sure they mentioned Script Frenzy in the press release.)

Sam Wallin lives in Vancouver, Washington with his wife and two children. You can check out his blog here.