Papatango today announces full casting for the world première of the 2023 Prize-winning play Some Demon by Laura Waldren – a play focusing on the relationships fostered and fractured when a group of strangers are thrown together in an eating disorder unit. Grounded in authenticity and lived experience, Some Demon was chosen from 1,468 scripts entered to the Prize.
Artistic Director of Papatango George Turvey directs Leah Brotherhead (Mara), Amy Beth Hayes (Leanne), Joshua James (Mike), Sirine Saba (Zoe), Hannah Saxby (Sam) and Witney White (Nazia).
The production opens at the Arcola Theatre on 17 June, with previews from 14 June, and runs until 6 July, before a run at Bristol Old Vic from 9 to 13 July.
Judged anonymously, the Papatango New Writing Prize was the UK’s first, and remains the only annual, opportunity guaranteeing a new writer a full production (for the coming 2025 Prize in Park200 at Park Theatre), publication by Nick Hern Books, a royalty of 8% of the box office, and a £7,500 commission with full developmental support.
In addition, every entrant receives feedback on their script – a commitment made by no other company, especially significant as the Prize averages more submissions on a yearly basis than any other playwriting award.
Other writers produced under the Prize include Dawn King, Dominic Mitchell, Iman Qureshi, Samuel Bailey, Tom Morton-Smith, Fiona Doyle, Matt Grinter, Luke Owen, Louise Monaghan, James Rushbrooke, Tajinder Singh Hayer, Tom Powell, Jaki McCarrick, Clive Judd, Igor Memic and Nkenna Akunna. Collectively, writers launched through the Prize have won Olivier, BAFTA, Critics’ Circle, The Times Breakthrough, OffWestEnd and RNT Foundation Awards, been nominated for the James Tait Black Drama Prize and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, premièred in over thirty countries worldwide, and gone on to work with many leading companies as well as in the West End.
