The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting is the UK’s biggest national competition for playwriting. It is the search for great new plays and great writers. We look for scripts that are original and unperformed, by writers of any experience.


Podcast: Adapting Other Works

 The trials of translating and adapting other people’s work are discussed by 3 leading artists whose work is onstage at the Royal Exchange this season. April…

Podcast: Women in Theatre

In the first of the Royal Exchange’s new series of podcasts, Royal Exchange Dramaturg Suzanne Bell talks to Bryony Shanahan, Katy Rudd and Jude Christian…

2017 Round Up

Its been a busy year for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting! Not only was the 2017 Prize opened to submissions with the winners announced at 13th…

Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting winners 2017

The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting is delighted to announce that Tim X Atack is the 2017 winner for his play Heartworm. Heartworm was judged anonymously and…
I want to read a play that takes me out of my experience. I want to see how the writer illuminates the truth of things that I recognise in a whole new way. 2017 Jury
Plays can be limitless and I want the playwrights to embrace that 2017 Jury
Why now – even if a play is set in another time, it somehow questions who we are now. 2017 Jury
A play that has ideas and questions. A play that has a point of enquiry. Tells us things we don’t know yet – that is exploring something unknown and the surprise and complex truth of that. 2017 Jury
A play that has specificity and rigour. I want to feel something. 2017 Jury
A play that has a sense of humour – even if it’s dark and serious – not totally plumbing the depths of despair – not plays that are resigned, despairing and whinging. There is something beautiful about laughing collectively in a space. 2017 Jury
I want to read a play that makes me realise that I have been doing it wrong – immediately makes you realise you need a broader definition of what a play could be. 2017 Jury
A play that is very clear about why I have got to be in the same room and can only be done in the theatre – crying out to be in the same room. 2017 Jury
When I write, I am not giving a lecture, I am speculating on behaviour. Sometimes this is dangerous but it should be. 2017 Jury
I want to be entertained! I want to be grabbed and taken on a journey. 2017 Jury
I want a play that excites me emotionally and intellectually – that I want to talk about for hours and days afterwards – that haunts me. 2017 Jury
I want to listen to a voice that we haven’t heard before – that is of the here and now – theatre is an artform of the now. 2017 Jury
The written word