My zombie play “A Plague on Both Your Houses“—think Night of the Living Dead crossed with Romeo and Juliet—has never been performed, save for a star-studded reading during the 1998 Stoker Awards weekend. And by performed, I simply mean that since the work was on the final ballot that year, and all nominees got a chance to read a chunk of their work, and my play wouldn’t have been understood if multiple characters had been read in my voice alone, I dragooned a bunch of my friends on stage to read along with me.

Had you been there, you’d have seen Michael Marano, David Honigsberg, Ed Bryant, Nina Kirki Hoffman, Gordon van Gelder, and others (including me!) as zombies. Well, some of us anyway. Some were the last surviving humans on Manhattan Island in a post-apocalyptic future. But I’ve always wanted something more.

And while discussing the piece at Readercon last month—because people have been reading and talking about it again due to its inclusion in my all-zombie collection What Will Come After—I’ve decided to finally make that something more happen.

Here’s where you come in. I’m announcing the creation of the Blow the Top of Scott Edelman’s Head Off Really Cool Zombie Filmmaking Competition to encourage the creation of short videos based on sections of the play, with the winner (as judged by me) receiving $200 and my undying awe. (Zombie awe should always be undying, shouldn’t it?)

Here are the rules:

1. Take any passage you’d like from my zombie play “A Plague on Both Your Houses,” which I’ve uploaded here under Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) and create a video of no less than three minutes in length (but as long as you wish) incorporating the dialogue of your choosing.

2. The clip can be in any format—live action, animation, marionettes, claymation, kinetic typography, sock puppets, anything you think will best amaze me with your creativity.

3. Upload the video to YouTube or Vimeo, whichever you prefer, no later than October 15, 2011 (checking the “Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)” button at YouTube or stating on Vimeo that you’re licensing it under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license) and send me the link.

4. I’ll review all entries and be the sole arbiter of the winner, based solely on pure awesomeness and the ability of your clip to blow the top of my head off. (Which the best zombie videos should do, don’t you think?)

5. I’ll announce the winner (and show what I consider the top three videos) sometime during the World Fantasy Convention weekend in San Diego, October 27-30, 2011.

6. The winner will receive $200, plus a signed hardcover copy of my zombie collection What Will Come After. Two runners-up will each receive $50 and signed hardcover copies of the collection as well.

7. Multiple submissions are allowed, so if you’d like to create clips of more than one section of the play, or the same section in a different style, feel free!

8. The judge’s decision (MY decision) will be final.

Ready to give it a shot? Then download the full script for “A Plague on Both Your Houses” and get started!

Good luck!