How do I enter?

The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting – which seeks scripts from established, emerging and debut writers to develop for the stage – will return in 2022. Submissions will open in late January 2022 along with the announcement of the judging panel, before closing on 6th June.

The biennial prize is a partnership between property company Bruntwood, a major supporter of the arts, and world-class producing theatre, the Royal Exchange Theatre, in Manchester. Launched in 2005, it is now recognised as a launch-pad for some of the country’s most respected and produced playwrights and screenwriters, including Anna Jordan, Laurie Nunn, Duncan Macmillan, Janice Okoh and Kendal Fever.

The Prize received a record-breaking 2,561 entries during its last cycle, which culminated in Phoebe Eclair-Powell’s play, SHED: EXPLODED VIEW, being named overall winner in November 2019. Winning plays are selected across four categories, with each winner entering into a development process with the Royal Exchange Theatre in an endeavour to bring their work to production.

The Bruntwood Prize categories are always evolving based on our evaluation of how best to support writers of all abilities, writing for the stage now. We have announced the 2022 dates early to be transparent about our process, and to allow writers to start to prepare. We’ll be working hard on further details – including the 2022 prize categories, events and new learning resources – and will make all updates and announcements here on this site for the Jan 2022 launch.

A bit more on 2021 and our work on developing the Prize here: https://www.writeaplay.co.uk/the-bruntwood-prize-for-playwriting-isnt-going-anywhere/

All plays are submitted anonymously to the competition and will be read by an expert panel of readers appointed by the Royal Exchange Theatre. There is an extensive five stage process to the reading before creating the shortlist. The final panel of readers, including key artistic staff from the Royal Exchange Theatre, compile a shortlist for the Judges to consider. The Judges will received the shortlist of scripts mid October 2022.

If you still have questions about the process, you may find the answer to your query in the Prize Guidelines and FAQ below or contact the Bruntwood Prize Co-ordinator, Chloe Smith, on bruntwood.prize@royalexchange.co.uk

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Reading process

The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting has supported the development and productions of a significant number of playwrights since its inception in 2005. Open to writers in the UK and Ireland aged 16 and over, so far there have been 28 winning playwrights who have been awarded a total of £256,000. There have been 25 critically acclaimed productions of winning entries across 38 UK wide venues, as well as a number of productions of plays elsewhere that were identified through the judging process.

Different plays reach different stages in our reading and consideration of the entries, but all of them are subjected to the same criteria and process. We have a large dedicated team of readers to process the entries. These readers are experienced in reading scripts for the stage. They are made up of directors, dramaturgs, playwrights who are previous winners of The Bruntwood Prize, producers, literary agents, other theatre practitioners and artistic staff at the Royal Exchange Theatre.

There are various stages to the reading process. Throughout the process, the script remains anonymous. Unfortunately we can not enter into a dialogue with any writer about their entry, the readers or the reports or discussions about their work.

The information below is designed to let you know what happens after your play is submitted. It is in no way an indication of what kind of play you should write or how you should write it.

Stage 1: First Read
All the scripts entered for The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting are read by one of our readers, who each work through a proportion of the entries. We guarantee to read at least the first 30 pages of every script entered into the The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting.

At this stage we are reading for the quality of the dramatic writing according to the broadest possible criteria:

Subject Matter – where narrative-driven or not, is there a clear sense of story which is for the stage, is there a sense that the writer is pursuing something that excites them?

Dialogue and Language – at whatever level, does the script show a feel for speech and dialogue? Does the writer create a sense of drama through the language and think about language as a live means of expression on stage? Does the writer engage with language (physical and verbal) in an interesting way?

Development – does the script put things at stake, is there a sense of drama and conflict, do the characters develop and change through the play, does the world or situation develop and change, does the audience go on a journey?

Audience – does the play engage with a live audience as a piece of theatre or does it have the potential to do that.

Scripts are then categorized by readers –

Grade A – immediate further read, go straight to Stage Two
Grade B – second read
Grade C – no further progress
Stage 2: Second Read
New readers are brought in at this stage of the process to provide fresh eyes to the scripts and create a new level playing field for all the entries that have reached this stage.

Readers are encouraged to recommend plays for a second read if there is any doubt in their mind or feel a second pair of eyes should take a look at the play. When a play goes through Stage Two, the reader looks at the whole play and writes a short report, recommending one of three things:

A. The Play should go to Stage Three and be a contender for the Longlist
B. The Play might be a candidate for feedback
C. The Play should not progress past Stage Two

This stage of the process tests the strength of the qualities described above, whether the potential is clear to two readers and helps define where the script’s strengths and weaknesses lie.
Stage 3: Third Read
New readers are brought in at this stage of the process to provide fresh eyes to the scripts and create a new level playing field for all the entries that have reached this stage.

Each reader reads the entire script, really considering its strengths, and writes a more extensive report on the play. The aim of this stage is to identify the plays which will progress onto the Longlist. Each reader will recommend one of three things:

A. This play should be a contender for the Longlist
B. This play should be on the Feedback List
C. This play should not progress past Stage Three
Stage 4: Longlisting
This part of the process involves new readers and staff at the Royal Exchange Theatre lead by Dramaturg Suzanne Bell. The aim of this stage is to identify 30-40 plays as potential entries for the Shortlist.

Two lists are created through Stage Four –

1. Feedback List – a list of plays we feel represent the best 100 entries which will receive a detailed report and feedback.

2. Longlist – 30-40 of those scripts which are the strongest candidates for the Prizes.

This list of top 100 entries will receive full written feedback on their work and our response to it. By this point in the process, the play will have been read by at least four different people and will therefore receive a range of feedback. The aim of this feedback is to suggest where the play impressed or intrigued us and where we feel there may be potential to explore further. This isn’t intended as a set of notes for the next draft or how to write the play more successfully but more a series of provocations and questions to hopefully enable you to write the play you want to write.
Stage 5: Shortlisting
All the plays on the Longlist are discussed at a Script Meeting with the Royal Exchange Theatre core artistic staff and other members of the theatre involved in new work. There will also be two new readers at this stage who will have extensive experience of new writing and new work for the theatre. The aim of this meeting is to produce a Shortlist of plays that we feel are serious candidates for development and production.

A Shortlist of 10-15 plays then goes forward to the Judges for the awards to be made.

Key dates

24 Jan 2022
Open for submissions from 6pm
6 Jun 2022
6pm - submission close
28 Jun 2022
Phase One Reading Complete
19 Jul 2022
Phase Two Reading Complete
16 Aug 2022
Phase 3 Reading Complete
13 Sep 2022
Longlist of Top 100 Plays Announced
21 Oct 2019
Shortlist Announced
14 Nov 2022
2022 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting Ceremony
31 Dec 2022
Deadline for Feedback sent to Longlist Plays

Prize guidelines

Rules

PLEASE NOTE: These rules will be revised to reflect The Bruntwood Prize 2022 categories and process- please check back in Jan 2022 before submitting

1. The Bruntwood Prize Award, Judges Award and Original New Voice Award are open to anyone residing in the UK or Republic of Ireland or British Overseas Territory or with a British Forces Post Office address.

2. The Bruntwood Prize International Award is open to international playwrights invited to anonymously apply via our named international partners. We are afraid that no other international submissions can be considered at this time.

3. The Original New Voice Award will be awarded to a playwright who self declares on submission they have not had full-length play professionally produced for 12 performances or more in a professional venue. All scripts entered by these playwrights are also eligible for the Bruntwood Prize, and Judges Award.

4. Entrants must be sixteen or over. There is no upper age limit.

5. Scripts must be submitted anonymously under a pseudonym with no other identifying information on the script

6. We can only accept one entry per person.

7. The play must be an original, unperformed and unproduced piece of work.

8. The play must be an hour long or more in playing time.

9. We do not accept translations, adaptations of other pieces of work, musicals or pantomimes. We also do not accept plays written exclusively for younger audiences.

10. The entrant must exclusively own and control all copyright and all other related rights to the submitted script.

11. The submitted play must be available for production and unattached to any other theatre or company. Any scripts that have been professionally optioned, produced or published will be disqualified.

Scripts

The play must be an original, unperformed and unproduced piece of work. ∞
The play must be an hour long or more in playing time.
We do not accept translations, adaptations of other pieces of work or musicals. We also do not accept plays written exclusively for younger audiences.
The entrant must exclusively own and control all copyright and all other related rights to the submitted script.
The submitted play must be available for production and unattached to any other theatre or company. Any scripts that have been professionally optioned, produced or published will be disqualified.
We do accept plays co-authored by more than one writer. Please ensure that only one entry is submitted with one set of contact details.
If you have won a prize in any previous Bruntwood competition, (excluding Commendations) you may not enter a script. However, you may enter if you have been shortlisted or longlisted in the past.

Judging/Prizes

All scripts awarded prizes are automatically under option to the Royal Exchange Theatre for a period of twenty four months after the announcement of the awards.

If a winning script is produced by the Royal Exchange Theatre, the prize money will replace all first production or development fees. However, the standard percentage of box office receipts and rehearsal attendance fees will still be paid to the writer.

* We define resident through your ability to produce, if asked, proof of main address on a driving license, appropriate Inland Revenue document, or if not in possession of these, a phone bill with proof of address. A full list of British Overseas Territories can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories

∞ Amateur performances do not apply. Unproduced means the play cannot have received a professional production in any form, anywhere in the world, apart from one rehearsed reading only.

Should you need to get in touch or ask us any questions, please email bruntwood.prize@royalexchange.co.uk

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FAQs

Here is a list of common questions that we have been asked previously about the Prize and entering your play. We will update these as the competition continues, but if your question isn’t answered here, please contact us at bruntwood.prize@royalexchange.co.uk.

Who is the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting for?
Anyone with a story to tell! The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting wants to hear from a range of voices, whether or not you have ever written before. You don’t have to have any experience of writing for theatre; 35% of the entrants to the 2017 Prize had never written a play before.
Is the Bruntwood Prize really anonymous? How?
All scripts are submitted under a pseudonym- at no point will this website ask for your real name. Scripts remain entirely anonymous throughout the judging process. We also ask that scripts themselves be left blank- with no pseudonym included on the title page- due to concerns that the pseudonym itself may influence some readers.

The judging panel has no knowledge about the writers of each script and the writers are only revealed when the Judging process is complete and winners chosen.

The Bruntwood Prize Co-ordinator endeavours to protect the anonymity of the Prize at every stage. This includes arranging for scripts to be redistributed if readers suspect they know the writer of an assigned script, and arranging shortlisted scripts to be judged under a temporary title- if it is possible to find out information on a script from its title through searching online.

The Bruntwood Prize Coordinator is responsible for moderating all submitted scripts, and ensure they have all been submitted fully anonymously. They do not read or have any impact on the winners of the prize.
Do I have to live in the UK or Ireland to enter? Can I enter the International Award instead?
The rules state that to enter the prize you should be able to provide proof of a main or primary address within the UK or Ireland. If you are primarily based outside this area unfortunately, we aren’t able to accept your entry unless who have been invited to apply via one of our named international partners.We are afraid that no other international submissions can be considered at this time.

As well as the large number of scripts we receive, the reasons for this include the fact that from the announcement of the winners, those writers engage in a process of development with the Royal Exchange (or in the case of the International Award, with one of our international partners)
Is the International Award anonymous?
Yes- while playwrights are invited to submit by our international partners playwrights submit via the same process on this website and enter into the same anonymous reading process as all the submitted scripts.

At no point will readers or Judges be aware of who has submitted to the international prize before winners are chosen. This includes reassigning scripts if readers suspect they know the writer of an assigned script.
Does the Original New Voice Award mean a first time playwright can no longer win in the other categories?
No- a first time playwright is still eligible to win both the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting and the Judges Award.

The Original New Voice award simply allows the Royal Exchange Theatre to further support a playwright who is at a relatively early stage in their journey, to focus on the development of their craft and explore their relationship to their work.
When will I hear about the success of my entry?
The deadline for entries for the Bruntwood Prize 2022 is Monday 6th June, 2022 at 6pm.

The Top 100 Feedback List of scripts will be announced on this website in September 2022. This list of top 100 entries will receive full written feedback on their work and our response to it. These writers will receive their feedback by the end of 2022.

We are unable to commit to notifying writers of their progress through the competition before these dates due to the changeable volume of entries affecting the reading timeline.

The Longlist is announced publicly on this website due to the anonymous nature of reading requiring all scripts and writers to remain under a pseudonym at this point.

Shortlisted writers will be contacted via the telephone- please ensure you include an up to date ands direct number with your submission.

Unfortunately, we are unable to give feedback on unsuccessful scripts which did not make it into the Top 100, due to the high number of entries we receive.
Can I enter any other playwriting prizes alongside the Bruntwood?
We actively encourage you to enter your script into any prizes and competitions for which it is eligible! However, if your script wins or is commissioned/optioned for production by another company during the process of judging for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2022, you will need to contact us as soon as possible to withdraw from the competition.
If I win, will my play be performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre?
All winners of the competition will have the chance to enter into a relationship with the Royal Exchange with the aim of developing their play towards production.

Many of these relationships have now resulted in full productions for winning plays, but none of the prizes come with a guaranteed production. The Theatre is serious about developing and producing Bruntwood-winning work, but is not able to offer productions as part of any of the Prizes.

We do NOT use suitability for the Royal Exchange Theatre stages as a criteria for judging.
How do I judge the length of my play?
The competition rules state that plays must be of an hour or more in playing time. No exact measure can be made of the length of a piece of writing for theatre, but it can be useful to consider an evenly covered A4 page as just over a minute’s worth of stage time. However if your script has passages of very dense dialogue, movement, or video or music then a play of an hour or more might run to less than 60 pages.

The best way to judge this is to read your script out loud

There is no upper limit to the length of your script.
What counts as an adaptation of another piece of work?
The aim of The Bruntwood Prize is to find an original piece of work for the stage. This means that the piece cannot be based wholly or largely on an existing piece of fiction or non-fiction writing. Any play that provides a close re-telling of an existing story or another writer’s work is not eligible.

Biographical work and plays with a strong factual or historical content are eligible for the competition. Scripts that take inspiration from or share links to existing stories are also not excluded from entry.

We do not exclude plays that take inspiration from or make reference to existing stories, myth or fiction.
What should I do if I've made a mistake with entry?
If you’ve uploaded the wrong document or made a mistake in the entry process, please contact us at bruntwood.prize@royalexchange.co.uk . It’s best not to try and enter the Prize again, but to let us make any amendments at this end.
Does my play have to be in a particular format?
Other than making sure the document contains the title of the play and no other personal or contact information, there are no rules about how your play should be formatted or how any of it should be laid out.

The competition rules state that plays must be of an hour or more in playing time. The best way to judge this is to read your script out loud

There is no upper limit to the length of your script.
Can my play have had a production before?
The rules of the Prize state that no play can have received a professional production but that if your play has received an amateur production it is still eligible for the competition. We define a professional production via the following criteria;
- Have tickets been sold to a paying audience?
- Have you been paid for the play or actors and other collaborators have been paid for their work?
- Has the production received promotion and marketing to sell tickets?
- Was a professional producer attached to the production?
- If you answer no to these questions the production will be defined as amateur.
We do not exclude scripts that have had up to two professionally produced readings.

If you have any further questions about whether a play that’s received a production is eligible, please contact us on bruntwood.prize@royalexhange.co.uk
I haven't received a confirmation email about my entry?
After you have successfully completed the entry process, you should receive a confirmation email from us to let you know your entry has been successful. This email may take an hour or so to arrive. If you haven’t received it do check your junk mail. You can also email us to get confirmation of your entry at bruntwood.prize@royalexchange.co.uk (please include your pseudonym and play title).
Does my play have to be in English?
We welcome submissions that use languages other than English, however please make an English translation available within the first 30 pages of the script to enable our readers to assess your work fairly. We do endeavour to find suitable readers for all scripts, but untranslated non-English passages restrict our pool of readers significantl.y
Are cast sizes taken into consideration?
No, the number of performers required is not taken into consideration during the judging process. Some of the past Bruntwood Prize winners have had large casts sizes. It is the story that is important to the readers, not the size of the cast.
Can my play have songs or music in it?
Yes! The Bruntwood Prize cannot accept full musicals, however if your script demands passages of music then please do indicate this in the script.

Of course, we aspire to produce all winning script, so should this work win it would be necessary to secure the music rights for performance. However this is no barrier to entry, and Bruntwood Prize winning plays such as ROLLING STONE by Chris Urch and WISH LIST by Katherine Soper have both included passages of very well known music.
Should I create a new email address to apply if my real name is in it?
Only the Bruntwood Prize Co-ordinator can see the back end of the website and the email addresses used to submit, and they don’t read so as not to compromise the anonymity of the process. The readers and judges receive your TITLE ONLY anonymity script and no other submission details.

Please do use an email address you check regularly! We do make announcements directly here on the Bruntwood Prize site to ensure swift and clear communication with all entrants, as we find many entrants choose to use a lesser used (or anonymous email) which can hamper or slow getting in touch with individual entrants.