Papatango Reveals 2024 New Writing Prize and Partnership with Park Theatre

Papatango has announced that their 2024 New Writing Prize will open for submissions at noon on Wednesday 17 January, until noon on Monday 11 March. This Prize launches a new partnership with Park Theatre, who will co-produce the winning play with Papatango in a full run on their main stage.

Judged anonymously, the Papatango New Writing Prize was the UK's first, and remains the only annual, opportunity guaranteeing a new writer a full production – for 2025 in Park200 at Park Theatre, publication by Nick Hern Books, a royalty of 8% of the box office, and a £7,500 commission with full developmental support.

In addition, every entrant receives feedback on their script – a commitment made by no other company, especially significant as the Prize averages more submissions on a yearly basis than any other playwriting award.

Also announced today, this year's winning play, Some Demon by Laura Waldren, will transfer to Bristol Old Vic from 9 to 13 July following the previously announced run at the Arcola Theatre. This part of the run was made possible due to the generous support of an Ian McKellen/ATG grant.

Papatango's George Turvey and Chris Foxon said today, “Launching the 16th annual Prize, as we prepare to produce the debut script by last year's winner Laura Waldren in two cities and make a short film by another outstanding 2023 entrant, Josh Barrow, makes us realise how far Papatango has come. That the 2024 Prize will see us commit to premiere a new play by an emerging writer on our biggest stage to date, thanks to the new partnership with Park Theatre, shows how much further we can still go. New plays and new artists don't need to be seen as a 'risk' - their stories deserve to be presented with the same ambition and the same confidence as any other writer's. We are more determined than ever to present the next generation of playwrights on the stages they deserve and need to sustain a career.”

Jez Bond, Artistic Director of Park Theatre, said: ““As an off West End theatre that presents a majority of new plays, this partnership represents a terrific new partnership for us at Park Theatre. Papatango have an excellent track record of discovering and developing writers and we're excited to team up with the team to nurture new and emerging talent and provide a platform for the work on our stage.”

Laura Waldren commented on the run of Some Demon at Bristol Old Vic, “I am beyond excited that Some Demon will transfer to Bristol Old Vic following our run at the Arcola. After training as an actor at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and starting my career at the Tobacco Factory, Bristol has become my home away from home, so this feels like a real full-circle moment. I'm really happy the play will also be reaching an audience outside London, given the huge impact that regional inequality has on the treatment of eating disorders.”

Other writers produced under the Prize include Dawn King, Dominic Mitchell, Iman Qureshi, Samuel Bailey, Tom Morton-Smith, Fiona Doyle, Matt Grinter, Luke Owen, Louise Monaghan, James Rushbrooke, Tajinder Singh Hayer, Tom Powell, Jaki McCarrick, Clive Judd, Igor Memic and Nkenna Akunna. Collectively, writers launched through the Prize have won Olivier, BAFTA, Critics' Circle, The Times Breakthrough, OffWestEnd and RNT Foundation Awards, been nominated for the James Tait Black Drama Prize and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, premièred in over thirty countries worldwide, and gone on to work with many leading companies as well as in the West End.

ABOUT SOME DEMON:

The world premiere of the winner of the 2023 Papatango New Writing Prize

SOME DEMON

By Laura Waldren

Arcola Theatre: 13 June – 6 July

Press night: 17 June

Bristol Old Vic: 9 – 13 July

Sam's eighteen and her life's about to start. Zoe's forty-something and hers never did. They don't have much in common. Just a love of 80s' new wave, and an illness that wants them dead.

Thrown together in an eating disorder unit, their most intimate secrets exposed, they form a complicated bond. When another patient turns the ward into chaos, they face questions that dictate their survival. Most of all: how to navigate an institution that keeps you safe inside but unable to cope outside?

Grippingly authentic, incisively witty and profoundly compassionate, Laura Waldren's remarkable debut won the Papatango New Writing Prize from 1,468 plays.

Laura Waldren is a writer and actor from Hull, and a current writer in residence for Pentabus Theatre. Some Demon is her first full-length play. Her debut screen work, This Is Hell, which she co-wrote and starred in, won the Pilot Light TV Festival and screened at the BAFTA and BIFA-qualifying Bolton International Film Festival. As an actor she recently appeared in the critically acclaimed second series of I Hate Suzie.

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