Soho Theatre today announces the Award winner for its prestigious new writing competition, the Verity Bargate Award, sponsored by Character 7, at an event celebrating the five shortlisted playwrights from a record number of 1700 submissions, 20 longlisted and five shortlisted plays.
Eoin McAndrew’s Little Brother has been selected as the Award winner, and Martina Laird’s Driftwood as runner-up.
The Verity Bargate Award is Soho Theatre’s biennial playwrighting award open to new writers living in the UK and Ireland, who have had fewer than three professional productions, and looking for plays alive to the world, in touch with Soho Theatre’s audience, and have an audacity to make people gasp. Submissions opened on Thursday 11 April to coincide with the Soho Theatre opening of the critically acclaimed production of the 2022 Verity Bargate Award-winning play, Boys On The Verge Of Tears by Sam Grabiner, directed by James Macdonald.
The judging panel, chaired by Stephen Garrett of award-winning independent production company Character 7 (Culprits, The Undoing, The Night Manager) included multi award-winning screen and stage actor and Artistic Director of Pitlochry Festival Alan Cumming, director Anthony Lau (former Associate Artistic Director, Sheffield Theatres), playwright Anupama Chandrasekhar (The Father and the Assassin at National Theatre) , Olivier Award-winning playwright Moira Buffini (Handbagged at Kiln / West End; Dinner at National Theatre / West End), award-winning musician and actor Rebecca Lucy Taylor AKA Self Esteem (Cabaret at Kit Kat Club) and writer, director and Nouveau Riche artistic director Ryan Calais Cameron (For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy at Royal Court Theatre / West End; Typical at Soho Theatre).
Chair Stephen Garrett from Character 7 said: ‘In the few years that we have been sponsoring the Verity Bargate Award, the bar for great and inspiring writing from emerging voices just gets higher and higher. This year’s shortlist was of an extraordinarily high-quality and in truth any of the five plays would have been deserving winners. Little Brother is very beautiful, true, immensely moving, oh-so personal, and somehow universal, too. I can’t wait to see the play on the stage’
As Verity Bargate Award winner, Eoin McAndrew receives:
- £8,000 for an exclusive option for Soho Theatre to produce the prize-winning play
- A full London run of the play staged at Soho Theatre
- And for the first time in the history of the Verity Bargate Award, Soho Theatre partners with leading new-writing venues in India and USA to hold workshops and readings of the prize-winning play. This is a career-defining opportunity for the winning playwright to build new relationships outside the UK and for their play to receive international exposure. It builds on Soho Theatre’s mission to develop sustained cultural exchange with global partners in India and USA, increasing opportunities for international artistic collaboration.
Speaking after today’s celebration event, Eoin McAndrew said: ‘Competitions like Verity Bargate Award are good as they give you a deadline and structure and routes into the industry that people recognise and want to see. I like the work Soho Theatre does and I felt like [Little Brother] might be a play that finds an audience there’.
