The deadline for the 17th Meyer Whitworth Award has now passed.
The award recipient will be annouced in October 2008.
The 17th Meyer-Whitworth Award is funded by the Royal National Theatre Foundation and managed by the Playwrights' Studio, Scotland in association with the UK Playwrights Network.
With a prize fund of £10,000, the Meyer-Whitworth Award is the largest annual monetary prize for playwriting in the UK. It is intended to help further the careers of UK playwrights who are not yet established.
Plays nominated must be in the English language and have been produced professionally in the UK for the first time between 1 November 2006 and 30 November 2007.
Candidates will have had no more than two of their plays professionally produced, including the play submitted.
No writer who has previously won the award may reapply, and no play that has previously been submitted for the award is eligible. A play submitted for consideration must be an original work. Translations are not eligible.Writers must be resident in the British Isles or Republic of Ireland.
How to nominate a Play
Nominations must be made by directors of professional theatre companies.
Contact Playwrights' Studio, Scotland on info@playwrightsstudio.co.uk or +44 141 332 4403 to request an application form. Details for the 18th Meyer-Whitworth Award will be available from December 2008.
Morna Pearson won the 16th Meyer-Whitworth Award with her play Distracted. (Traverse 2006)
Click here for the press release
Meyer-Whitworth Award General Information
Supported by the National Theatre Foundation through a prize fund of £10,000, the Meyer-Whitworth Award is intended to help further the careers of UK playwrights who are not yet established.
The award is also intended to draw to public attention the importance of writers in contemporary theatre. In doing so it honours one of the six objectives formulated by the SMNT in 1909 “to produce new plays and to further the development of the modern drama”.
The award is made to the writer whose play, in the judges’ opinion, most satisfies the following description:
The judges reserve the right to advise that no script meets the required standards of the award and that therefore the award should not be made.
The value of the award is up to £10,000. The award is given by a panel of three judges. The judges’ decision is final.
Nominations must be made by directors of professional theatre companies.
History
In 1908 the movement for a National Theatre joined forces with that to create a memorial to William Shakespeare. The result was the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre Committee, which thereafter became the practical and legal embodiment of the campaign for a National Theatre.
The Meyer-Whitworth Award was set up to commemorate all those who were members of, or worked closely with, the SMNT. Many are household names. They are too numerous to list here, however, and the award bears the name of but two protagonists: Carl Meyer, a wealthy philanthropist who inaugurated the appeal fund with a donation of £70,000 in 1909 – a princely sum in those days – and Geoffrey Whitworth, who did so much to maintain the long campaign for the National Theatre as founder and director of the British Drama League and as Honorary Secretary to the SMNT from 1930 to 1951.
Previous winners are-
1991 Award inaugurated
1992 (1st Award): Roy MacGregor for Our Own Kind
1993 (2nd Award): Philip Ridley for The Fastest Clock in the Universe
1994 (3rd Award): Diane Samuels for Kindertransport
1995 (4th Award): Jointly – Terry Johnson for Hysteria & Billy Roche for The Cavalcaders
1996 (5th Award): Michael Wynne for The Knocky
1997 (6th Award): Conor McPherson for This Lime Tree Bower
1998 (7th Award): Jointly – Moira Buffini for Gabriel and Daragh Carville for Language Roulette
1999 (8th Award): David Harrower for Kill the Old Torture their Young
2000 (9th Award): Kate Dean for Down Red Lane
2001 (10th Award): Ray Grewal for My Dad’s Corner Shop
2002 (11th Award): Jointly – Gregory Burke for Gagarin Way and Henry Adam for Among Broken Hearts
2003 (12th Award): Gary Owen for Shadow of a Boy
2004 (13th Award): Owen McCafferty for Scenes from the Big Picture
2005 (14th Award): Steve Thompson for Damages
2006 (15th Award): Dennis Kelly for Osama the Hero
2007 (16th Award): Morna Pearson for Distracted
Playwrights' Studio, Scotland
CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3JD
Telephone: 0141-332-4403
Textphone: 0141-332-3208
E-mail: info@playwrightsstudio.co.uk
Charity Number: SC036767
Top image :: DYING FOR IT by David Cosgrove, SYT Productions, Photography: Anthony Brannan