By Christa Yeo

An American student at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts Asia, which is located in Singapore, has won a playwriting contest in the United States with a piece of work that started out as a class assignment.

Josh Billig's one-act play, Outside Sitka, won the 24th annual Tennessee Williams Literary Festival 2010 Playwriting Contest. The festival is an annual five-day celebration held in New Orleans in late March to honour the late Putlizer Prize-winning playwright Tennessee Williams.

Billig, 28, said his play was conceived during an assignment for a one-act play. He set it in rural Alaska where a couple runs a methamphetamine laboratory.

'The man wants to quit and start life anew but his partner is a former prostitute so when he wants to clean up, it means she has to return to prostitution,' he said.

After re-working the play in workshops and with his teacher, he submitted the play to the competition and found out last week that he had won.

Billig, who is studying for a master of fine arts degree in dramatic writing, will receive US$1,500 (S$2,101), a staged reading of his play in this year's literary festival and a full production in the 2011 festival.

The festival showcases national and regional scholars, writers and performing artists. Some big names at this year's festival starting on March 24 include Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights Edward Albee of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? fame and John Patrick Shanley, who wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for his play, Doubt: A Parable.

Billig, who enrolled at the Tisch school here because he wanted to try living abroad, intends to pursue playwriting when he finishes his studies.

His teacher, Mr William Kovacsik, an assistant arts professor at the school, said: 'Josh has an exceptional voice. He is a very talented and gifted young man and the fact that he won this award is a confirmation of a fact that we already knew.

'The play is raw in the sense that it deals with some very primal human emotions. When it is staged, I think audiences are going to be a little shocked. It is a thought-provoking play.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times.