Submissions Open For The Women's Prize For Playwriting 2023

The Women's Prize for Playwriting, produced by Ellie Keel and Paines Plough, today announce that submissions for this year's prize open on Monday 16 January 2023. The Prize is designed to celebrate and champion exceptional playwrights who identify as female or non-binary by providing them with a national platform. The Prize is awarded to a full-length play (defined as over 60 minutes in length), written in English, and the winning playwright wins £12,000. The Prize is sponsored by Samuel French Ltd, a Concord Theatricals company, who are the official publishing partner of the prize.

Submissions close on Monday 17 April, with the longlist set to be announced early October. The finalist scripts will be announced in November, and an Awards Ceremony will be held in December 2023.

In its inaugural year, two First Prizes of £12,000 were awarded. The first was to Reasons You Should(n't) Love Me by Amy Trigg - which premièred at Kiln Theatre to critical acclaim in May 2021 and embarked on a UK tour in 2022, directed by Joint Artistic Director of Paines Plough Charlotte Bennett, with an audio version produced by Audible the following month. The second was to You Bury Me by Ahlam, directed by Joint-Artistic Director of Paines Plough Katie Posner, which had a staged reading at the Lyceum Theatre in August as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, and has been developed for a major production this Spring at Bristol Old Vic, the Royal Lyceum Theatre and the Orange Tree Theatre directed by Joint-Artistic Director Katie Posner and co-produced with Paines Plough, WPP, 45North, the Lyceum, the Orange Tree Theatre, in association with Bristol Old Vic. Consumed by Karis Kelly was the 2021 winning script, and the play is currently in development for production, with further details to be announced.

The judges for this year's Prize, chaired by Artistic Director of Kiln Theatre Indhu Rubasingham, are journalist Samira Ahmed, playwrights April De Angelis and Chris Bush, actor Noma Dumezweni, literary agent Mel Kenyon, journalist and critic Anya Ryan, Head of Play Development at The National Theatre, Nina Steiger, and Guardian Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner.

Open Zoom sessions with information for potential entrants, and an opportunity to ask questions about the process will be held on 25 January and 22 February.

Indhu Rubasingham, Chair of Judges, today said, "It is a real honour to be Chair of Judges as this brilliant prize moves into its third year. The panel will be looking for thrilling, boldly original plays by female and non-binary playwrights of all ages and experience levels. The panel will be choosing our winner in the knowledge that the play will be produced by the Women's Prize and Paines Plough, so our advice and encouragement to writers submitting to this prize is to write the play you wish you could go and see - the play you think the world needs! It's particularly lovely to become Chair given that the Kiln hosted the first ever production of a Women's Prize-winning play, Amy Trigg's Reasons You Should(n't) Love Me, just after lockdown ended in 2021. That was a fantastic collaboration and I'm so pleased we are able to continue it. I can't wait to read the final five plays later this year."

Ellie Keel, Founder Director of the Women's Prize for Playwriting, said, "It feels very fitting that we're opening submissions for the 2023 Prize just as rehearsals begin for YOU BURY ME, our major production and tour of the play that won in 2020. I'm so excited about this year's Prize - about reading the brilliant submissions from writers and working with our reading team and judges to find our longlist, shortlist and 'Final Five', and ultimately the winning play. It continues to be an absolute joy to be at the helm of this campaign to level the playing field, which sadly is more necessary than ever given that recent research has shown that in 2022 men accounted for 74% of credited writers in UK theatre. This is an unacceptable state of affairs which we're determined to change."

Katie Posner and Charlotte Bennett, joint Artistic Directors of Paines Plough, added "We can't wait to kick off 2023 with a third year of the Women's Prize for Playwriting! This pioneering new prize which we co-founded in 2019 with Ellie Keel is at the centre of Paines Plough's commitment to levelling up gender equality amongst writers in theatre. The prize has already found three exceptional winners and two of those plays have already had productions: Reasons You Should(n't) Love Me by Amy Trigg toured to over 19 UK venues, and You Bury Me by Ahlam is currently just weeks away from debuting in Bristol. The prize is not just about identifying writing talent but producing it and sharing that talent across the country as it so rightly deserves. For any writer considering applying we encourage you whole-heartedly to be brave and submit! Previous winners have included first time writers so even if this is your first-time putting pen to paper, please know that this prize is also for you and in return we promise that we and our reading teams will take great care of your script. We can't wait to read your work and hear your brilliant and bold stories."

Details on how to submit plays will be available here: www.womensprizeforplaywriting.co.uk/how-to-enter/