NEW DRAMA PRIZE OFFERED

New York, N. Y., November 14, 1915.--To encourage playwriting among college students, and at the same time to secure a play for herself, Miss Grace George announced yesterday that she would award a prize of $1,000 for the best play submitted to her by any American college student. The announcement came from a playhouse where Miss George has established a repertory company. The prize-winning play will be produced by Miss George and her company at the Playhouse. In addition to the $1,000 the author, will be paid royalties according to regular arrangements.

The judges will be a dramatic critic of one of the metropolitan dailies, a well-known playwright, and a recognized stage director, the names to be announced in the near future.

Conditions are that the subject of the play must be American and modern, and the author must be a bona fide undergraduate in an American college or university up to the time the contest closes, on June 1, 1916. Approval of the faculty will be required in each case before students may become contestants.

Miss George, explaining her offer yesterday, said, "Although I make the offer generally, I expect the keenest response from the larger universities where dramatic departments are already established. Professor G. P. Baker at Harvard takes students with dramatic instinct and develops that talent in his English 47. Yale and Columbia have similar courses, I believe, and Syracuse University has begun one within the past few months. Steps have been taken in the same direction at the University of Minnesota and other institutions. I have been greatly interested in these attempts to encourage intelligent consideration of playwriting among students. Harvard seems to have been most successful, turning out such men as Edward Sheldon, Fred Ballard, and Cleves Kinkead. I believe that one reason such good men have been developed at Harvard has been the help offered in the matter of prizes. There is the McDowell Fellowship of $600 and the Craig Prize of $500, with the guarantee of a production in Mr. Craig's Boston theatre.

"Now I want to go both of these one better, and I do not restrict my offer to Harvard. I'll give $1,000 and guarantee a Broadway production. I hope to hear from every college where there is a man who can write a good play. I believe that the best plays of the future are coming from college men, particularly our best comedies, and it is in comedies that I am most interested."