Longlist announced for the
Women’s Prize for Playwriting 2021
The Women’s Prize for Playwriting, produced by Ellie Keel and Paines Plough, with Principal Partner 45North and in association with Sonia Friedman Productions today announce the 62 longlisted scripts for The Women’s Prize for Playwriting 2021, selected from 850 entries. The Prize is designed to celebrate and support exceptional playwrights who identify as female by providing them with a national platform. The Prize is for a full-length play (defined as over 60 minutes in length), written in English, and the winning playwright wins £12,000. The Prize is sponsored by Samuel French Ltd, a Concord Theatricals company, who are the official publishing partner of the prize. The founding sponsor of the Prize was PER People.
In its inaugural year two First Prizes of £12,000 were awarded. Reasons You Should(n’t) Love Me by Amy Trigg premiered at Kiln Theatre to critical acclaim in May 2021, directed by Charlotte Bennett. An audio version was produced by Audible the following month, ahead of a national tour in Autumn 2022. You Bury Me by Ahlam, directed by Katie Posner, had its première at the Lyceum Theatre in August as part of the Edinburgh International Festival.
Ellie Keel, Founder Director of The Women’s Prize for Playwriting, today said, “After an amazing first year of The Women’s Prize for Playwriting in which we were delighted to mount a full production of Amy Trigg’s Reasons You Should(n’t) Love Me at Kiln Theatre, as well as the premiere of You Bury Me by Ahlam at the Edinburgh International Festival, I’m thrilled to have a second longlist bursting with quality, ambition and imagination. It’s going to be a difficult job to whittle down these 60 plays to a shortlist – they have in common the fact that they are rich in theatrical possibility and aren’t afraid to take on complex, confronting and important subject matter. I’m proud of every writer who submitted a play to The Women’s Prize for Playwriting in what has been an extraordinarily challenging year for the creative industries.”
Katie Posner and Charlotte Bennett, joint Artistic Directors of PainesPlough, added, “The last 18 months have been an overwhelming challenge for the theatre industry and for freelancers in particular and so we were astounded by the incredible quality of all the plays submitted to this year’s Women’s Prize for Playwriting. The creativity that has shone through despite a pandemic is nothing short of inspirational. We appreciate how hard it is to press ‘send’ on a play and share your words with strangers and it has been a true privilege to have read so many people’s work, which has once again shown that there is an abundance of amazing talent amongst female-identifying playwrights. We can’t wait to continue reading into the next stages of the prize.”
The judges for this year’s Prize are Arifa Akbar, Mel Kenyon (Chair), Lucy Kirkwood, Jasmine Lee-Jones, Winsome Pinnock, Indhu Rubasingham, Jenny Sealey, Nina Steiger, Nicola Walker and Jodie Whittaker.
The longlist in full is:
MOUNTAIN WARFARE by Abi Zakarian
The Lampy by Áine King
Little Sister Alice Flynn
Birdie by Alison Carr
Mountain by Amy Conway
Scum by Ava Wong Davies
Like.Share.Kill by Bella Enahoro
sorry did I wake you by Beth Collins and Nina Georgieff
Awareness by Beth Westbrook
Foreign by Carmen Harris
Never Quiet, Always Echoes by Catherine Lucie
PIONEER by Clare Slater
YELLOW TEETH by Dina Nayeri
Of Silent Words by Diya Sengupta and Amy Brian
REWILD by Gemma Lawrence
Time, Like the Sea by Georgia Bruce
After the Cold by Georgie Murphy
A Very Odd Birthday Party by Hannah Donelon
A Bouffon Play About Hong Kong by Isabella Leung
The Rescue by Isabelle Kassam
FURIES by Isley Lynn
Baghdaddy by Jasmine Naziha Jones
This Little Earth by Jessica Norman
The Great Floating Island of Brigid by Jo Cattell
Consumed by Karis Kelly
Void by Laura Waldren
Hope and Her Children by Lauren Morley
Not by Lisa Parry
Jockstrap by Lucy Davidson
The Light Trail by Lydia Sabatini
upright enuf by lydia luke
The Middle by Mandi Chivasa
And Tomorrow I’ll Dance With You by Méábh de Brún
Behind the Veil by Melina Namdar
Why Be Good by Melissa Bubnic
Kissing by Miriam Battye
The Water Clan by Morna Young
Dollars and Sense by Naomi Sumner
I Can’t Hear You by Natasha Brotherdale Smith
With Striplights Hung From the Stars by Natasha Collie
Sankofa by Nicole Acquah
Blessed Spirits by Nicole Joseph
Some of Us Exist in the Future by Nkenna Akunna
Decades by Paula B Stanic
She’s Just Something That’s Happening by Penelope Saward
These Demons by Rachel Bellman
Torque by Rebecca Hill
Queen Mab by Rebecca Wilcox
SAMUEL TAKES A BREAK IN MALE DUNGEON NO. 5 AFTER A LONG BUT GENERALLY SUCCESSFUL DAY OF TOURS by Rhianna Kemi Ilube
Stars by Rhiannon Brace
A Woman Walks into a Bank by Roxy Cook
For The Culture by Safaa Benson-Effiom
Mandrake by Sarah Power
Rojava by Sharon Farrell
Aftercare by SJ Wong
HOW I LEARNED TO SWIM by Somebody Jones
Til it Stops by Sophie Max
The Kilburn Muhammad Ali by Tam J Miller
G by Tife Kusoro
Imposter Syndrome by Tolu Fagbayi
Ripe by Trudie Shutler
Say it with Sequins by Victoria Buse
www.womensprizeforplaywriting.co.uk
The article can be accessed here.