Papatango New Writing Festival 2012 Winners Announced

Following the huge success of the Papatango New Writing Festival 2011 in partnership with the Finborough Theatre which saw unprecedented press acclaim for the sell-out production of the winning play, Dawn King's Foxfinder, the partnership between Papatango and one of London's leading new writing venues, the multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre, continues...??This year's competition saw 700 entries from all over the world. The winners are:

In first place is Pack by Louise Monaghan which will receive a four week run at the Finborough Theatre opening Tuesday, 27 November 2012 (Press Night: Thursday, 29 November 2012 at 8.30pm). The script will also be published by Nick Hern Books.

In second place is Everyday Maps for Everyday Use by Tom Morton-Smith which will receive a three week run opening Tuesday, 4 December 2012 (Press Night: Thursday, 6 December 2012 at 6.30pm).

There will also be staged readings of the third and fourth place winners as part of the Festival – Back Home Contemplation by May Sumbwanyambe on Monday, 10 December 2012, and Photos of You Sleeping by Jane Wainwright on Monday, 17 December 2012.

This year's winning plays were chosen by a panel of judges that includEd Howard Davies (Director), Matt Charman (Playwright), Neil McPherson (Artistic Director of the Finborough Theatre – with the exception of one recusal), Francis Grin (Literary Manager at the Finborough Theatre), Con O'Neill (Actor), Tanya Tillett (Knight Hall Agency), Blanche McIntyre (former Leverhulme Bursary Associate Director at The National Theatre Studio and the Finborough Theatre, and director of last year's winning play), and the writer of last year's winning play, Dawn King.

Papatango was founded by Matt Roberts, George Turvey and Sam Donovan in 2007. The company's mission is to find the best and brightest new talent in the UK with an absolute commitment to bring their work to the stage. Since then, Papatango have produced twelve pieces of new writing in such venues as the Tristan Bates Theatre, the Old Red Lion Theatre and the Pleasance London. 2009 saw the launch of their first Papatango New Writing Competition, which each year has gone from strength to strength. www.papatango.co.uk

Tuesday, 27 November – Saturday, 22 December 2012
Pack by Louise Monaghan
Directed by Louise Hill. Designed by Olivia Altaras. Lighting by Neill Brinkworth.

"This woman spat at me the other day. I could taste the saliva on me own tongue. And I don't blame her, not for one minute I don't. Because if someone beat my child half to death, I'd want to do the same."

As a BNP rally gathers momentum on the streets outside, four women meet to play bridge. Struggling to find common ground, they talk about the men they married, their gifted and delinquent children and what their own heritage means. But beliefs and loyalties are tested to the limit when Stephie's fourteen year old son, Jack, is implicated in a brutal racist attack that leaves an eleven year old Pakistani boy close to death.

A raw, uncompromising drama about bigotry and racism that explores the insidious rise of the British National Party.

Playwright Louise Monaghan was the winner of a Bruntwood Prize Judges' Award 2011 for Shadow Play. Her first radio drama Alone in the Garden with You, produced and directed by Jessica Dromgoole, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 earlier this year. In 2006, she was a member of 'The Fifty,' a new writing initiative run by The Royal Court Theatre in conjunction with the BBC. Her other plays include Beautiful – nominated by Out Of Joint Theatre Company for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2009, and Aurora which was a finalist for both the London Festival New Writing Award and Little Brother's Big Opportunity competition 2010. She was shortlisted for Theatre Centre's Adrienne Benham Award 2012 and is a member of their Skylines group.

Director Louise Hill has directed two sell-out productions of plays by J.M. Barrie at the Finborough Theatre - What Every Woman Knows and Quality Street, for which she was named Best Newcomer Director by the British Theatre Guide and nominated as Best Director at the OffWestEnd Awards – and the first London revival for many years of Sutton Vane's Outward Bound in February 2012. She trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and spent two years as Artistic Director of the Bristol Shakespeare Festival. Most recently, she directed David Mamet's Boston Marriage for Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Other directing includes Spiders and Crocodile Tears (Soho Theatre Studio), To a Sunless Sea (Etcetera Theatre), Face to Face (Old Red Lion Theatre), The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew (Middle Temple Gardens), Tiny Dynamite (Alma Tavern Theatre, Bristol) and IAGO, her own adaptation of Othello, for which she won a Fringe Review Outstanding Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Festival. She was Associate Director on Travesties and The Importance of Being Earnest (Birmingham Rep). Assistant Direction includes Blackbird and The Winslow Boy (both Salisbury Playhouse).

Tuesday, 4 December – Saturday, 22 December 2012
Everyday Maps for Everyday Use by Tom Morton-Smith
Directed by Beckie Mills. Designed by Olivia Altaras. Lighting by Neill Brinkworth.

"I don't think we'll get to Mars…not really…not normal people. Scientists might…it'll end up a scientific outpost like Antarctica…but it won't be for people like you and me."

Maggie has found a warm patch of ground on Horsell Common. She believes something is buried in the dirt. This is the site of the Martian invasion in H G Wells' The War of the Worlds and she sneaks out of the house in the dead of night and dances on the warm spot. Here she meets Behrooz, an amateur astronomer who spends his nights mapping the surface of Mars.
Cartographer John is remapping the streets of Woking. He's about to become a father and is terrified by the thought. He finds an ally in Corinne, Maggie's mother - a woman struggling to keep her sex life separate and secret from her daughter.
Kiph, who everyone thinks is gay, its madly in love with Maggie, his best-friend. He attends a book signing to meet his hero, Richard Bleakman - star of cult 80s sci-fi show John Carter of Mars. Richard has problems of his own.
A stunning new play about fantasy and sexuality, and about the blurry and indistinct lines between reality and desire.

Playwright Tom Morton-Smith's plays include Salt Meets Wound (Theatre503), In Doggerland (Box of Tricks at Theatre503), Venison (Yellowtale Theatre Company at The Hawth, Crawley), Uncertainty (Sincera Productions at Latitude Festival) andThe Hygiene Hypothesis (Sincera Productions at Latitude Festival). He collaborated with composer Jon Nicholls on a play with music, Blunderbuss (The Theatre, Chipping Norton). He wrote an episode of BBC Radio 7's Man In Black series, entitled Flesh. He has had short plays and rehearsed readings performed at The Old Vic, The Hampstead Theatre, the Soho Theatre, The Royal Court Theatre, Trafalgar Studios, the Liverpool Everyman, the Southwark Playhouse, the Arcola Theatre and Shakespeare's Globe. He was writer-in-residence at Paines Plough in 2007-08. He is currently under commission to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Director Beckie Mills' work at the Finborough Theatre includes Love on the Dole and I Was a Beautiful Day (and its subsequent transfer to the Tron Theatre, Glasgow). Other direction includes Romeo and Juliet (Pendley Shakespeare Festival), Hired (Nabokov Present: Tense at Watford Palace Theatre), Practice, A Play with Music (Royal Shakespeare Company Projects at the Young Vic), Heath/Cliff (Royal Shakespeare Company Projects), Cabaret, Alice in Wonderland, Fear and Misery in the Third Reich (Bristol Old Vic Youth Theatre), Over The Edge (Bristol Zoo Gardens), The End of the World as We Know It (Lightship John Sebastian for Bristol Old Vic), Write Here Write Now (Bristol Old Vic Studio), The Melancholy Hussar (King's Head and Etcetera Theatre), Cahoot's Macbeth (King's Head Theatre) and Alban, a community opera (St Alban's Cathedral and St Alban, the Martyr, Holborn). Assistant Direction includes The Taming of the Shrew (Royal Shakespeare Company), Don John (Royal Shakespeare Company and Kneehigh) and Hedda Gabler (Theatre Royal Bath and Tour). She is also a visiting director at Central School of Speech and Drama, an Associate Education Practitioner at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and has read scripts and developed new work with several theatres and companies including The Tron, The Young Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

STAGED READINGS

Monday, 10 December 2012
Back Home Contemplation by May Sumbwanyambe

"Take your beloved England and tell her tomorrow that she shall lose for five generations and counting every doctor, every nurse, every teacher, every engineer. A country as advanced as that will tomorrow be in the Stone Age. You do that to a country in her infancy and you have a third world. A place of chaos. A place of war"

When Melissa's mother, a famous Zimbabwean Prostitute, passes away on the eve of the 2008 presidential elections. Melissa gets the one thing she has wanted all of her life. To meet her "English" father Mwemba. But is he ready to respond to the daughter he never knew he had and answer to the decisions that have paralyzed all of their lives?

Several months later, to find safety from Mugabe's militias and campaign of torture, Garikai has led his British educated half-siblings, Patience and Busani, into southern Zambia. But as more displaced Zimbabweans find their way to the growing communal fire, clinging onto the fragile hope that their parents are still alive somewhere in the over populating townships of northern South Africa becomes harder and harder…

Playwright May Sumbwanyambe has taken part in several young writers programmes, including most recently the Royal Court's invitation only studio group. He has also been attached to the West Yorkshire Playhouse and the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse with the support of two BBC seed commissions. In 2011, May's plays were shortlisted for both the Alfred Fagon and the BBC'S Alfred Bradley Awards. He has been shortlisted for OffWestEnd'ss Adopt a Playwright award on two occasions, reached the final round of Soho Theatre's Verity Bargate Award and was also longlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award. Currently writing under commission to Hull Truck Theatre, his shorter work includes With Fumes of Human Roast (Hampstead Theatre – Start Night) and Feeding the Birds (The Old Vic 24 Hour Plays). May is also a tutor on both the West Yorkshire Playhouse's annual new writing programmes.

Monday, 17 December 2012
Photos of You Sleeping by Jane Wainwright
Dennis used to be on track for the life he wanted. He had a loving wife, and a newborn son. Now his wife has gone, and the baby has grown into a man. Only he didn't turn out quite how Dennis had imagined – Andrew is a sex offender.

As the two men are forced together by circumstance, Dennis realises that the ties between a father and son aren't so easy to undo. As Andrew's acts grow increasingly perverse and Dennis finds himself punished for his son's actions, we begin to question who the real victim is.
A story of two men who must learn to love each other.

Playwright Jane Wainwright was born in Derbyshire. She was a member of The Royal Court Theatre's Young Writers Programme, their Invitation Group for Playwrights and their 'Supergroup' of twelve specially selected writers. Plays include Barrow Hill starring Janet Henfrey (Finborough Theatre), In World, performed as part of Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights (Finborough Theatre), Hands Free, part of 'AVE IT!, in the Coming Up Later season (The Old Vic Tunnels) and Pet's Corner (The Miniaturists at the Arcola Theatre). She was shortlisted for the WritersRoom 10 scheme and the BBC Heartlands new writing scheme, and her play In World was part of the final shortlist in last year's Papatango New Writing Competition. Jane is 'fostered' by OffWestEnd's Adopt A Playwright Award.