The Women’s Prize for Playwriting, produced by Ellie Keel and Paines Plough, today announce that submissions for this year’s prize open on Monday 16 January 2023.
The Prize is designed to celebrate and champion exceptional playwrights who identify as female or non-binary by providing them with a national platform.
The Prize is awarded to 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.
Submissions close on Monday 17 April, with the longlist set to be announced early October. The finalist scripts will be announced in November, and an Awards Ceremony will be held in December 2023.
The judges for this year’s Prize, chaired by Artistic Director of Kiln Theatre Indhu Rubasingham, are journalist Samira Ahmed, playwrights April de Angelis and Chris Bush, actor Noma Dumezweni, literary agent Mel Kenyon, journalist and critic Anya Ryan, Head of Play Development at the National Theatre, Nina Steiger, and Guardian Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner.
Open Zoom sessions with information for potential entrants, and an opportunity to ask questions about the process will be held on 25 January and 22 February.
Indhu Rubasingham, Chair of Judges, today said, “It is a real honour to be Chair of Judges as this brilliant prize moves into its third year. The panel will be looking for thrilling, boldly original plays by female and non-binary playwrights of all ages and experience levels. The panel will be choosing our winner in the knowledge that the play will be produced by the Women’s Prize and Paines Plough, so our advice and encouragement to writers submitting to this prize is to write the play you wish you could go and see – the play you think the world needs! It’s particularly lovely to become Chair given that the Kiln hosted the first ever production of a Women’s Prize-winning play, Amy Trigg’s Reasons You Should(n’t) Love Me, just after lockdown ended in 2021. That was a fantastic collaboration and I’m so pleased we are able to continue it. I can’t wait to read the final five plays later this year.”
Details on how to submit plays will be available here: www.womensprizeforplaywriting.co.uk/how-to-enter/
