We are excited to announce our winning plays of the 2025 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition!
Each play will be developed in a two-week event in September 2025. During those two weeks, each play will be workshopped with a professional dramaturg, a faculty director and a student cast. The festival culminates in a public staged reading of each play.
Full-Length Winner
Eating Crow by Kit Hoffmann
In this madcap farce based on a true story, Emma Crow, daughter of WashU founder Wayman Crow, juggles the demands of her moral compass, her love of poetry, her aptitude for the occult, and her very carnal feelings for a very buff actress.
About the playwright:
Kit Hoffmann is originally from the Pacific Northwest. She enjoys writing plays and doing science and, in her free time, going down Wikipedia rabbit holes about the family members of her school's founders. Her other work includes the award-winning play Yet Another Murder Mystery in 1920s England, the short noir story The Hellhole Club, and the beginning of a novel that she occasionally chips away at.
Winning Ten-Minute Plays
Full Fathom Five by Heather Elaine Anderson
Two men - Shakespearean actors and old friends - reunite after a tragic loss to bury the hatchet. But with strong wine, swift tongues, and old betrayals in play, they find the line between life and Shakespearean drama blurring very quickly.
About the playwright:
Heather Elaine Anderson (she/her) is a senior majoring in drama and anthropology. She is a multi-hyphenate artist and critical Shakespeare lover. She played Camillo in the PAD's production of The Winter's Tale and participated in the Summer Globe Program in 2023. This summer, she will be a directing shadow for Hamlet and Romeo & Zooliet at the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, and an acting apprentice with Boston's Commonwealth Shakespeare Company.
Unwelcome Truths by Anna Schwartz
This short play is inspired by psychologist Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience following the Nuremberg trials. Milgram’s research was criticized for its unethical methodology and rejected due to its disturbing insights into human nature. The play imagines a modern, dramatized version of the Milgram experiments and investigates what one man will do to another, just following orders.
About the playwright:
Anna is a first-year Arts and Sciences student and Nemerov scholar from Atlanta. She has studied at Alliance Theater and Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse. Her love of storytelling drew her to theater, and she hopes to continue playwriting, directing, and dramaturgy. Anna is also a member of WashU’s slam poetry group (WUSlam’s Pcrew), participates in student theater (Cast n’ Crew), and acted in HotchFest 2025.
Cold Feet by Rebecca Yang
A director must confront her own insecurities when personal and professional boundaries blur.
About the playwright:
Rebecca Yang (Class of 2026) is an economics and film and media studies double major from Wisconsin. She is particularly interested in how self-reflexivity manifests in media. Primarily a screenwriter, she is grateful for WashU PAD's playwriting program as it has helped her grow a lot as a writer. She has a mild aversion to talking about herself and would rather write about other people, so she's glad this bio is brief.
The 2025 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting festival will take place on September 26 & 27, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.
Annamaria Pileggi will direct Eating Crow, and Jeffery Matthews will direct Cold Feet, Unwelcome Truths, and Full Fathom Five.
