Award

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

The award has been 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 in 2022 and was nominated for an Olivier Award.

The winner of the 2021 award Chasing Hares by Sonali Bhattacharyya premiered at the Young Vic in 2022.

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

News on the next round of the award will be announced soon.

Criteria

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

• There is no age restriction.

• There is 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 is 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.

• This award was created to support playwrights who haven’t yet had many opportunities to have their work produced by a professional company or venue. So we accept 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.