Missouri State University’s Cristina Pippa won the Josephson Entertainment Teleplay Award at the Austin Film Festival (AFF) Oct. 25 in Austin, Texas.

“Lady Em,” is a 60-page, hour-long drama created as a television series pilot,” said Pippa, associate professor and director of the MFA in Dramatic Writing program at Missouri State.

Pippa’s script was a finalist in two categories — Drama Teleplay Pilot and Josephson Entertainment Teleplay Award — and reached the semi-finals (the top 2%) in the AMC Pilot Award category.

Approximately 11,500 scripts were submitted to the festival.

So far, this is the only competition to which Pippa has submitted “Lady Em.” “It’s the one that means the most to me,” she noted. “It is ‘the writer’s festival,’ and they value a great story above all else.”

Just a story about a girl…

“Lady Em” is a drama series centering around a North Carolina teenaged witch who is a descendant of Lady Macbeth, Pippa said.

“Em typically only ‘kills’ on the volleyball court,” Pippa explains in the film’s synopsis. “But everything changes when the new kid at school shows up to help Em with her newfound powers.”

Now Em must confront her inherited destiny as a witch, a politically ambitious mother and an estranged father who also happens to be a witch hunter.

Judges describe script as “compelling”

AFF entries go through multiple rounds of readers and judges, according to Pippa. Getting the attention of judges, then, is an impressive feat. And based on their feedback, Pippa’s script is an outstanding accomplishment.

“Lady Em is compelling because we engage with her as a young woman who is navigating what seems to be a pretty straightforward life,” wrote one judge about the script’s plot.

The script has “a wildly authentic and compelling narrative,” judges said in their overall assessment of “Lady Em.”

“The author has an excellent and unique voice.”

About the script’s structure, judges wrote, “There is a genuine economy of action and dialogue that moves the narrative forward in a way that makes the audience eager to get to the second episode — which is always a strong sign for a story.”

Finally, when assessing the script’s potential, the judges commented that its “many wonderful layers” would attract drama fans, Shakespeare fans and younger audiences all at once.

“Lady Em,” they concluded, is a “well-crafted” and “engaging” story.

A writer’s process: from novel to screenplay

“Lady Em” was not always a television series idea. Pippa first began working on the story four years ago as a novel. When she joined the Story Incubator Writing Lab last fall, she adapted the novel into a feature-length screenplay.

“Then, I applied for and received a Story Incubator Writing Fellowship to write a TV pilot in May 2025,” she explained. In roughly one month, Pippa rewrote the story into its current television pilot format.

Since the festival, agents and producers have expressed interest both in “Lady Em” and Pippa’s other writing. She’s currently working with Merideth Finn of Cue the Dog Productions to pitch the “Lady Em” project.

“[Finn] believed in this story idea when I first began writing it as a novel,” Pippa said. “She read chapters and gave me notes on the version I’d written as a feature-length screenplay. When I told her I wanted to reimagine it as a series, she met with me regularly to talk about the characters, locations and heart of the story.”

“Having someone who believes in my vision and asks all the right questions to help make sure it’s all on the page has been a lovely way to reach this milestone,” she added.

Inspired by a “precocious obsession with Shakespeare”

“Lady Em’s” concept stems from William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, “Macbeth.” Since childhood, Pippa admitted she has had “a pretty precocious obsession with Shakespeare.”

“I happened to have the witches monologue memorized when I started at a new school in fourth grade and offered to perform it for my class,” she recalled. “As you can imagine, I didn’t make a lot of friends right off the bat.”

Recently Pippa learned that Shakespeare exercised a bit of historical license with Macbeth. “I discovered that the real story of the Macbeths is nothing like the play, and it was a completely different couple who killed a king in his sleep,” she said. “I got fascinated with the idea of misrepresentation and how to depict a girl coming into her own power.”

Although Shakespeare is a favorite influence, Pippa does not limit her writing to screenplays. She also writes musicals and fiction. In addition to polishing her novel, Pippa is writing a new feature while also adapting a children’s book into a new musical, scheduled for production in 2027.

“I’m always writing and developing new ideas,” she said.

Austin Film Festival photo credit: Jack Plunkett. Courtesy of the AFF Blog.