The Finborough Theatre today announces the winner for the ETPEP Award 2020. The winner is
Julia Grogan for Playfight.
Playwright Julia Grogan is 24, and grew up in Warwickshire. She trained as an actor at Rose Bruford College, graduating in 2018. Her acting work includes At Sea (BBC Radio 4), Belly Up (Vault Festival 2020) and Island Town (Catalyst Festival). While working behind the bar at the Royal Court Theatre, she was invited to join their Intro Writers’ Group and as a result wrote Playfight, her very first play.
Kiera, Zainab and Lucy are smart, outrageous and savvy. They’ve figured out that there are some things school sex ed lessons don’t cover. Now, as they grow from girls into womxn, they’re going to find the answers…
Informed by the rise in violence in mainstream pornography, Playfight interrogates the dangerous reality of hyper-sexualisation, experimentation and exploitation for womxn coming of age today. How we love, the pain we feel, the lengths we go to…
The ETPEP Award 2020 is a playwriting prize for new UK playwrights who work or have worked in the theatre industry, run by the Finborough Theatre in association with the Experienced Theatre Practitioners Early Playwriting Trust (ETPEP).
The winner will receive a prize of £6,000, a development relationship with the Finborough Theatre including one-to-one dramaturgy with Finborough Theatre Artistic Director and playwright Neil McPherson; and an online rehearsed reading performance of the winning play in March 2021. Nine longlisted candidates will also receive a prize of £300.
The judges for the 2020 Award were playwright Winsome Pinnock; Artistic Director of the Finborough Theatre and playwright Neil McPherson; Literary Manager of the Finborough Theatre and playwright Sue Healy; actor Oliver Ford Davies; actor, playwright and activist Athena Stevens; and Clive Webster of the Experienced Theatre Practitioners Early Playwriting Trust, which founded the award.
For a full list of longlisted and shortlisted candidates for the ETPEP Award, please visit
https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/etpep-award-2020
The ETPEP Award will return in 2021. Entries will open on January 1st and close on April 30th 2021. The main prize will again be £6,000 with nine longlist prizes of £300 each. For 2021, the winning play will also be published by Salamander Street, independent publisher of theatre, performance and live art.
The winner of last year’s ETPEP Award, Fence by Abigail Andjel, will also be produced at the Finborough Theatre in 2022.
Details at https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/etpep-award-2021/
