The Write Way In: Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2015

Duncan Macmillan is a playwright. He has worked with Paines Plough, the Royal Court and the Almeida. His work has been nominated for four Off West End Awards. His adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 is about to embark on an international tour. Last week the National Theatre announced his new play, People, Places and Things, will feature in their upcoming programme. This is a guy who has turned playwriting into a profession.

‘Good for him,’ I hear you sigh, as you throw down your lucky pen and scatter your most recent draft of Act 2 Scene VII across the dusty floor of your dingy rented room (let’s pretend you don’t have a laptop for dramatic effect). ‘It’s all about who you know in this bloody industry.’

“I think sometimes,” admits Sarah Frankcom, artistic director at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, “theatres can feel like closed shops. Increasingly fewer theatres are reading unsolicited scripts – it is difficult for a writer to find their way inside. The Bruntwood aims to provide a way in.”

Now in its tenth year, the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting is the UK’s largest playwriting competition. A joint venture between property company Bruntwood and the Royal Exchange Theatre, the prize has awarded 17 playwrights a hefty collective total of £160,000, and of course facilitated professional productions of the winning works. A certain Duncan Macmillan picked up a Bruntwood Prize in 2005 – and he certainly wasn’t on the National’s radar before that…

“Winners often transform from being a writer that nobody has heard of to a writer that people are very excited about,” says Frankcom, who takes her place on this year’s judging panel alongside the exceptional Nicholas Hytner, playwright Bryony Lavery and actor Meera Syal. “And of course, the prize initiates a direct relationship with a producing theatre who can nurture and provide bespoke support for a writer at an early point in their development.”

The entry rules are simple: the competition is open to anyone resident in the UK and Ireland, entrants must be 16 or over and the play must be an original, unperformed and unproduced piece of work – oh, and scripts must be submitted anonymously.

“The anonymity clause is important,” explains Frankcom. “It reiterates that the prize is genuinely open to anybody: people who have no prior connections with a theatre or the wider industry are given equal standing to those who do.”

At a time when the arts are under scrutiny for their evident lack of diversity, Frankcom also highlights the benefits of anonymity for theatre’s minorities: “Hopefully the Bruntwood will encourage a diverse range of writers to apply, safe in the knowledge that they will be judged solely on their work and not by any preconceptions of their gender, ethnicity or socioeconomic background.”

Eliciting the secret ingredients of a prize-winning play is no easy task, but Frankcom is keen to offer some sound advice: “The most important test with a play is that it pulls you in and keeps you turning the page. A good play will do that – it will hold you. I’m looking for something provocative and ambitious; something theatrically alive that challenges form and notion in a live context.”

So pick up that script, brush off the dust and put it in an envelope: it’s time to put your lucky pen to the test. Move over Duncan Macmillan.