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Given Kate Morris, Michael Downey and Sarah Robertson's current schedules, it is a wonder they find time to write.
Morris juggles part-time work with full-time studies at Victoria University, where she is completing an MA in script-writing. Downey works by day as an actor at Auckland Museum and, at night, in a variety of productions while Robertson is on her OE in London.
But write they do and very well, given the results of a local playwriting competition.
Morris, Downey and Robertson are the three winners of PlayRight 2007. It is a one-act play competition launched last year by the SmackBang Theatre Company to get original work heard and seen.
Their plays are not similar.
Downey describes his work Aroha as a satire on contemporary New Zealand, written in the style of a Greek tragedy. Aroha goes on a quest to find her calling in life and is advised by a group of well-meaning but bureaucratic guides to enter New Zealand Idol.
"It's a bit of a local commentary about the Government trying to tell us what to do all the time, it's a little bit about national identity myths and it's about bringing back satire to the theatre."
Morris says her play, Daddy's Dollar, is a drama inspired by recent child abuse cases. The main character is a deceased eight-month-old girl caught in a halfway world where she tries to piece together the events which led to her death.
"Her father let her drown. It's very much a drama and the problem with that is you don't want to come across as didactic. I've tried to make it more morally complex by considering the father's point of view," Morris says.
Robertson's The Bar at the End of the Word is about two people who create a world in which only the two of them exist.
"But they are two people with some serious issues and, sooner or later, the real world will destroy it," she says.
While their plays differ, the three shared similar reactions to being picked as a PlayRight winner.
Morris says the best part is that her work will be staged.
"You put so much work in so it is great people will be able to see it."
Downey, a founding member of the Rebel Alliance Theatre Company and an actor with the plays The Orderly and The Bomb to his credit, hopes the success will lead to more writing work.
Robertson, who has been writing for several years, agrees.
"I feel really lucky and stoked that SmackBang have this kind of initiative whereupon they are supporting new writers and producing work."
She will not be able to come home to see her play.
"I'm having my own little celebratory opening night with champers and curry."
Launched last year, PlayRight founder/producer Jared Turner wanted the competition to become an annual fixture on the arts' calendar so is happy it returns for a second year.
This year's competition received fewer entries than last year, when between 80-90 scripts were submitted from Kiwis at home and aboard. Turner isn't worried.
"We still got around 40 scripts this year. I think we had more last year because a few playwrights thought, 'I've had this script sitting round for a while so I might as well send it in', and sent in two or even three pieces of work.
"This year we said one script per person."
All scripts were read by a team of assessors who eventually agreed on nine semifinalists.
The remaining nine slugged it out at public play-readings conducted by professional actors including - among others - Ian Mune. A three-person judging panel of Gary Henderson, Pip Hall and Albert Belz then picked the winners.
Turner said this year more emphasis was placed on the "developmental benefits" for writers.
Dramaturges were hired to work with the winners to further develop the scripts and give advice for future projects.
Of the 2006 PlayRight winners, And Then You Die by Thomas Sainsbury was developed into a full-length, three-act play.
