Award

The Theatre Uncut Political Playwriting Award was created to discover and champion the political playwrights of the future.

The award is presented in partnership with the Young Vic, the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, the Sherman Theatre Cardiff, the Lyric Theatre Belfast, Nick Hern Books and Independent Talent.

The winner of the inaugural award 2019 two Palestinians go dogging by Sami Ibrahim premiered at the Royal Court Theatre 7th May - 1st June 2022 and has been nominated for an Olivier Award.

The winner of the 2021 award Chasing Hares by Sonali Bhattacharyya premiered at the Young Vic 16th July - 13th August 2022.

News on the 2023 award will be announced here soon.

Thank you to all of the writers who have submitted their plays to the award.

Information on all of our shortlisted and award winning playwrights can be found here.

Criteria

• The Theatre Uncut Political Playwriting Award was open to writers based in the UK only

• The award winner receives £9,500

• There was no age restriction

• There was no minimum level of experience

• We were looking for original stories, not adaptation or translation

• We welcomed musicals or plays with music at their heart

• This award was for plays longer than 60 minutes in length, so at least 40 pages or 9,000 words

• The play must not have received professional public production of any kind (public readings not included)

• The play must be written for stage

• The play should need no more than 6 actors

• Submissions were open from midnight 7th August 2020 and closed midnight 7th October 2020

• A longlist of 20 play were read by Theatre Uncut Artistic Directors Hannah Price and Emma Callander. A shortlist of 6 plays were then read by a panel made up of judges from our partner venues

• We were looking for new voices that haven’t yet had many opportunities to have their work produced by a professional company or venue so we are are accepting plays from writers who have had no more that two plays presented as professional full production runs (runs longer than 3 weeks)

• What do we mean by political? We were looking for plays that ask provocative questions about the individual's relationship with society. Although we are only able to accept submissions from writers living in the UK we will also welcome stories that examine the global perspective.