Image credit: Vlah Dumitru
The Liverpool Hope Playwriting Prize is a famous playwriting competition that takes place every year. Hosted jointly by the Royal Court Theatre and Hope University in Liverpool, it is the second-largest national playwriting competition. Unfortunately, as with many events last year, it was forced to cancel the 2020 competition. Now, 10 months later it has announced it is re-open for people to submit work – and with a massive £10,000 prize on offer to the winner, amazing!
How To Enter?
This year, the playwriting prize theme is comedy, so anyone who wishes to enter must write an original and unperformed script for a comedy play. Once submissions have closed a panel of judges will go through the entries and decide the winner. Les Dennis and his actor pals will award £10,000 to the person they feel submitted the best script. There are also a handful of other cash prizes for other scripts that the judges like. The competition takes part through 2021, with the award ceremony and winners announced in May of next year. If you do want to enter you’ll need to get your entries in by 30th June 2021.
Why Should I Enter?
If the chance to win £10,000 wasn’t enough then it is worth noting that the competition which has run since 2015 has also resulted in lots of entrants having their work commissioned – so you could find that your work is commissioned to be performed at various venues across the UK.
The Liverpool Hope Playwriting Prize
The people behind the playwriting prize have talked about their disappointment at having to postpone last year due to Coronavirus. It initially opened in March 2020 and they had already started to receive submissions before they had to announce that the competition would be postponed. They are now delighted to be able to open up the competition again and allow submissions and welcome those that have spent lockdown working on new scripts or improving existing ones to submit their work.
Traditionally the Liverpool Hope Playwriting Prize hasn’t been just a one-off award ceremony, but instead a celebration of talent throughout the year. They are hoping to be able to do the same this year and will be announcing dates soon, as long as social distance and restrictions allow. This will include several live performances, judging panels, workshops and masterclasses. It really is about celebrating playwriting talent and this year will be no exception.
Previous Winners
The last time a prize was awarded in 2019, it was given to Colin Dowland who wrote ‘Headless’ which is still in development, the primary school headteacher bagged a £10,000 prize. The time before that ‘The Last Act of Love by JB Moliere’ by Simon Bradbury won the prize and a female writer Katie Mulgrew won two years before that, having been judged by Kathy Burke for her script ‘Omnibus’.
So, if you want to enter then you should get to work straight away. You do need to be over 18 and a resident of the UK or ROI. Reviewing is anonymous and wines announced at the ceremony in May 2022.
