What happens to the thousands of entries? How does the competition unfold?
he first round of the Nicholl competition begins with the receipt of the initial entries in January or February, continues over the next five to six months and concludes by mid-July. As entries are received, application information is entered into or confirmed in our database, and each script and application form are assigned matching numbers. Scripts are then handed out to readers in small stacks for evaluation. Every few days, those readers exchange their completed stacks for new ones. As each script is returned, the reader briefly discusses it with Greg Beal, the Nicholl program coordinator. If Greg has questions about the reader’s scoring or comments, those questions are asked at that time. During the peak reading period – from late April through early July – 600 to 700 scripts are processed each week. Let’s use the most recent competition as an example. In 2008, 5,224 scripts were entered in the competition. All of those scripts were read once. Nearly 2,400 of the scripts, based o
