The yearlong celebration of Shakespeare’s 400th death-i-versary ends on Saturday. But before the clock strikes midnight, the American Shakespeare Center, a theater company in Staunton, Va., is announcing a future-oriented tribute: a 20-year contest to create 38 modern companion pieces to his plays.

The project, called “Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries,” invites writers to submit plays inspired by each of Shakespeare’s, on a schedule coordinated with the theater’s season. Two winners will be chosen each year, and will be performed in repertory along with the Shakespeare play that inspired them, starting in 2019. (Each winning playwright will receive $25,000.) The final year will consist of a retrospective of the best work from the project.