The value of 12,000 euros is a moment of galvanization for the industry that will have to “rejuvenate to back off” after the Pandemic Covid-19
Screenwriters vying for a new prize for playwrights have created “confusing” characters and “ambitious and politically charged” works, the prize’s producers say.
The Women’s Dramatic Writing Award, open to UK and Irish writers who identify themselves as women, was presented last year. The performances were closed in early March and the value increased in importance as a result of the coronavirus, which led to the sites later that month and has since devastated the theater industry. Producer Ellie Keel, whose company presented the award with Paines Plough (led by Charlotte Bennett and Katie Posner), warned that the industry will go through fewer artistic threats after the pandemic. “It’s a traditionally well-defined path that women’s paintings can be considered threatening,” said Keel, who needs to “force the theater industry to rejuvenate that backtrack.”
For Keel, the award is a galvanizing movement and an award, designed to protect and nurture a network of female writers. It is fostered through the ongoing effect of the 1996 Women’s Fiction Award, which was created after the 1991 Booker Award finalists list did not come with any novelist. Keel said that the Women’s Prize for Dramatic Writing, in partnership with 45North and in agreement with Sonia Friedman Productions, is a “call to arms” of a political nature and aims to “correct the gender imbalance in the number of plays produced on national stages.” . Training
An archive of registered playwrights each year will remain on the award’s online page as a resource for theater programmers. Keel said the theme of this year’s works is incredibly broad – “not limited to remotely” women’s problems “or domestic themes” – and that because they did not prescribe a specific area for the works, some are brief and compact while others are expanding epics. It estimates that the largest number of entries (1,169) is due to the inclusive and encouraging framing of the access criteria. “We sense the intimidating nature of rewarding his work, especially early in his writing career, and have presented plays at all stages of progression and writers from all walks of life.”
The prize fund of 12,000 euros is a monetary investment in a writer, who hopes That Keel will allow an era of monetary security in which to create more work. Some of the writers made the long list with their first work; others have already produced such famous plays as Isley Lynn, Yolanda Mercy, Miriam Battye, Camilla Whitehill, Julie Tsang and Eve Leigh. The authors were invited to send scripts with a letter about themselves and the cases in which they wrote the work.
Earlier this year, studies through playwright Jennifer Tuckett and the Sphinx Theatre Company reported that the gender gap in theatre had widened into key spaces 8 years ago, when the Guardian conducted an in-depth examination of the issue. Some organizations have followed specific methods to address the disparity. In 2019, artistic director Matthew Xia is committed to hiring female playwrights for his first 3 years of operation with Actors Touring Company. The National Theatre has set itself the purpose that by March 2021, 50% of writers who live for their scenes are women and 50% of the administrators who run on their stage will be women.
About a dozen “finalist” pieces will be decided from the long list of the women’s dramatic writing award and passed on to a jury chaired by literary agent Mel Kenyon. The winning piece will be co-produced through Ellie Keel Productions and Paines Plough.
The oldest foreign award for playwrights is the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, established in 1977 and previously awarded this year to Lucy Prebble for her work A Very Expensive Poison.