Post Productions Announces Winner of the 2025 Windsor-Essex Playwriting Contest
After months of intense deliberation, while fending off queries and speculations, Post Productions can finally reveal the winner of the 2025 Windsor-Essex Playwriting Contest: The Pet by Shane Nelson. The Pet is an eerie and atmospheric psychological horror that tells the story of ‘The Caretaker’ and ‘The Pet’, who attempt to co-exist in a co-dependent, secluded relationship under impossible circumstances.
The same love and trust that binds them traps them in a relationship that reaches its limits when a third party threatens their established routines.
As secrets of the Pet’s past are revealed, and the Caretaker flirts with the possibility of a different life, the challenges of attachment, caregiver fatigue, the burdens of responsibility, and the implications of societal waste exact a twisted toll. The Pet will provide an exhilarating and emotional experience for audiences during the 2026 Halloween season.
“For years we’ve been blunt about the fact that we’d like playwrights to submit romance and horror stories. Shane Nelson’s script was a finalist last year. So we were delighted when he submitted it again to the 2025 contest – and thrilled that he’d taken it from good to great.” – Post Productions Managing Director and contest coordinator Michael K. Potter
Nelson’s script is the tenth winner of the Windsor-Essex Playwriting Contest, which has been organized annually since 2018. Now the budding playwright holds the honour of having written the first horror script to ever win this prestigious contest. This is consistent with the playwright’s goals. “I want to be a part of a new age of horror theatre. That’s what this is: new horror theatre that brings in some elements from films like the ones produced by A-24.” Another of Nelson’s goals, realized in The Pet, is to leave as much as possible open to cast and crew. “I wanted to write a script with characters that could be played by people of any race, colour, creed, or gender – giving the director and actors room to breathe, so they can have more freedom.”
Although Nelson has submitted scripts to many contests and festivals, “This is the first time any of my writing has taken a first-place prize. I’m incredibly grateful to be the winner of this year’s contest. Theatre is something that is close to my heart and a massive part of my life. Over the last couple years I’ve mostly been working in film and television so I’ve had to step away from the stage and this is a major opportunity to get back to the place where I started.”
According to Nelson, the Windsor-Essex Playwriting Contest “is the most in-depth writing competition I’ve been a part of. I’ve submitted screenplays in the past to competitions, and you get feedback, but it’s nowhere near as detailed and done with as much care.” He has advice for those who may feel timid about submitting a script to next year’s Windsor-Essex Playwriting Contest: “Even if it’s not finished or to its highest potential submit because Post Productions will help you get it there. They’ll help you understand your work better.”
The Pet will make its world premiere at The Shadowbox Theatre in October 2026. Nelson is confident it will leave a lasting impression: “The Pet was written to be a theatrical experience unlike any you’ve seen before. A memorable experience. One that stays with you. I would like people to leave with a stronger sense of empathy.”
Shane Nelson is an actor and screenwriter from Windsor, Ontario. He is the son of a journalist from Niagara Falls, New York and an auto-worker from Amherstburg, Ontario, making him a dual citizen of Canada and the US. Shane began studying theatre as a teenager in Windsor at the Walkerville Center for the Creative Arts and went on to attain his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He has also trained internationally at the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia, walking the same halls that founders Konstantin Stanislavski and Anton Chekhov once walked.
As a writer Shane has created award winning short films and has recently launched a 15-minute work titled The Zone, based on the Tarkovsky sci-fi masterpiece Stalker (1979) and the novel Roadside Picnic. Shane also directed, produced, and stars in the short which is now making the rounds at festivals across the globe.
These last few years of pursuing his passion for film have brought some distance from his formative theatre years. Which is why this opportunity to collaborate with Post-Productions on his winning play “THE PET” means a great deal. It’s an opportunity to get back to a place he has missed dearly, and to create something brand new with experts of the craft.
Post Productions provides intimately-staged entertaining theatrical experiences that arouse the heart and fuel the mind, drawing patrons into lives quite unlike their own to help them understand the world, other people, and themselves with fresh insight. As a unique brand of theatre, Post Productions complements the Windsor-Essex scene by staging provocative productions for audiences that want more for their dollar.
