The Theatre Uncut Political Playwriting Award was created with the aim of finding the next generation of playwrights who want to explore the big issues that affect our lives today. The award winner receives £9,500.

They are looking for new voices that haven’t yet had many opportunities to have their work produced by a professional company or venue and so are accepting plays from writers who have had no more than two original plays presented as professional full production runs (runs longer than 3 weeks) excluding pantomimes and adaptations

They  are looking for plays that ask provocative questions about the individual’s relationship with society. Although they are only able to accept submissions from writers currently living in the UK they will also welcome stories that examine the global perspective

Guidelines 

• There is no age restriction
• There is no minimum level of experience
• This award has been created to support playwrights who are writing new plays, so although they deeply appreciate the skills of both adaptation and translation they can only accept original pieces of work
• They welcome musicals or plays with music at their heart
• This award is for plays longer than 60 minutes in length, so at least 40 pages or 9,000 words
• The play must not have received professional public production of any kind (public readings not included)
• The play must be written for stage
• The play should need no more than 6 actors

Deadline 

Midnight on the 7th October 2020

A longlist of 20 plays will be read by Co-Artistic Directors of Theatre Uncut Emma Callander and Hannah Price

A final shortlist of 6 plays will be read by Kwame Kwei-Armah (Young Vic), Gareth Nicholls (Traverse Theatre), Joe Murphy (Sherman Theatre), Rebecca Mairs (Lyric Belfast), Matt Applewhite (Nick Hern Books) and Jessica Stewart (Independent Talent)

By the time the winning script has been identified it will have been read by at least 10 theatre professionals, from a wide range of backgrounds with a wide range of different perspectives on the world

The Award

The winner of the award will receive £9,500. By accepting the award the playwright will agree to exclusively option the play to Theatre Uncut, the Lyric Belfast, the Sherman Theatre, the Traverse Theatre, the Young Vic and the Traverse Theatre for a period of 18 months from the date of the award announcement

There is no guarantee of production

All partners have the right to opt in or opt out of any potential production

The winning play will also have the opportunity to be published by Nick Hern Books