Bruntwood Prize 2015 winner announced
Receiving the Bruntwood prize in its tenth year is “the best boost of writerly confidence I could imagine” says recently announced winner Katherine Soper.
Katherine Soper has won this year’s Bruntwood prize for playwriting – Europe’s biggest playwriting prize – for Wish List, which is described as “a sensitive and delicately powerful play about trying to survive when every system is against you.”
Soper will receive £16,000 and a residency at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. The London-based playwright, who currently works in a Regent Street perfumery, described the win as “the best boost of writerly confidence I could imagine.”
The competition, which runs biennially, is a unique partnership between the Royal Exchange Theatre and property company Bruntwood and open to writers in the UK and Ireland who have an original, unperformed and unproduced play to submit. This year 1,938 scripts were entered into the competition – the second highest tally in the Prize’s ten year history.
Traditionally, three additional playwrights are awarded judges’ awards, and share a prize of £24,000. However, such was the quality of this year’s submissions, a fourth judges’ award was added. The four plays awarded are Sound of Silence by Chloe Todd Fordham, Parliament Square by James Fritz, How My Light is Spent by Alan Harris and Almighty Sometimes by Kendall Feaver.
Previous recipients of the Bruntwood prize have gone on to significant careers in theatre, including 2011 winner Alistair McDowall, who was later commissioned by London's Royal Court Theatre, and 2005 winner Duncan Macmillan, who garnered critical acclaim for his adaptation of George Orwell's 1984.
More information about the Prize can be found at writeaplay.co.uk/about