Finalists Revealed For the Women's Prize For Playwriting 2025

The Women’s Prize for Playwriting - produced by Ellie Keel Productions and Paines Plough - today announces the five finalist scripts for its 2025 Award, selected from a record-breaking 1,275 submissions. The winner, chosen by a judging panel chaired by Indhu Rubasingham, Director and Co-Chief Executive of The National Theatre, will be announced at a ceremony at @sohoplace on Monday 9 February 2026.

The finalist plays are:

• Sapling by Georgina Duncan
• THE (YELLOW) WALLPAPER by Phoebe Eclair-Powell
• f-ing Jane Austen by Billie Esplen
• THREE BOYS by Danielle James
• THE ROOM by Manjinder Virk

Launched in 2019, the Prize has championed female and non-binary playwrights, and campaigns for their plays to be presented on national stages in the UK and Ireland. Open to English-language plays running over 60 minutes, the Prize offers its First Prize winner £20,000 alongside an option for Ellie Keel Productions, Paines Plough, and Sheffield Theatres to co-produce the work. The prize is sponsored by Samuel French Ltd, a Concord Theatricals company, the official publishing partner of the prize.

Ellie Keel, Founder Director and Charlie Coulthard, Literary Manager of the Women’s Prize for Playwriting today said, “It’s a pleasure to introduce the Final Five plays and playwrights for this year’s judging panel to consider. Five extraordinary plays which compel you to look at the world in a different way. To reach this stage of the competition, in a year with nearly 1300 submissions, is testament to the clarity of voice, vision and ambition of these five playwrights. The prize was founded to champion new plays by female and non-binary writers and these five show the breadth of brilliant writing we’ve been lucky enough to read. It’s an enormous act of courage to send a play out into the world, and we’re so grateful to all the playwrights who took that leap of faith. Reading the plays this year has been a joy from start to finish.”

Katie Posner Co-Artistic Director of Paines Plough added, "We're so proud once again to be working on the Women's Prize for Playwriting. The submissions this year have been brilliant; the kind of writing that reminds us how theatre can bring the whole world to our doorstep. Writing a play is hard. Sharing it and letting it be seen and judged is even harder. Every writer who submitted showed so much courage and generosity in doing so, and we're blown away by the sheer ambition, imagination, playfulness and artistry that they brought to the page. Narrowing the shortlist down from such an exceptional field felt impossible, but we're proud to announce our final five. Each of them embodies the boldness, vision and spirit that make women’s playwriting so vital.”

Elizabeth Newman, Artistic Director of Sheffield Theatres commented, “We are thrilled to be part of the Women's Prize. When I arrived as Artistic Director of Sheffield Theatres it felt vital to build exciting partnerships like this one. It was such an exciting moment when we became the theatre building home of the Prize last year. I am so inspired by working with the extraordinary Ellie Keel and the brilliant Paines Plough team. The shortlist is fantastic, and I cannot wait to meet with the rest of the panel in the New Year to talk about it in more detail!”

Chaired by Indhu Rubasingham, the judging panel also includes Literary & Development Associate at Wessex Grove Kat Pierce, directors Milli Bhatia and Alice Hamilton, actress Romola Garai, Literary Agent Mel Kenyon, playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, Artistic Director of Bristol Old Vic NANCY MEDINA, The National Theatre’s Director of New Work Nina Steiger, and Guardian Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner.

Previous winners of the prize include Amy Trigg (Reasons You Should(n’t) Love Me), Ahlam (You Bury Me), and Karis Kelly (Consumed). Their plays have gone on to critical success and major productions, with Consumed recently completing a hit UK tour and sell-out run at the Traverse as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe, ahead of transfers to Lyric Belfast and Park Theatre in Spring 2026. The most recent winner, Sarah Grochala, is developing her play Intelligence with Paines Plough and Ellie Keel Productions.

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