 |
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
News
|
|||
|
News
|
Dateline: 2nd December, 2007
Catherine Johnson Award for Best Play 2007 The Pearson Playwrights’ Scheme has announced the winner of the first Catherine Johnson Award for Best Play 2007. He is James Graham whose play Eden’s Empire was written whilst attached to the Finborough Theatre. The Pearson Playwrights’ Scheme, formerly known as the Thames Television Theatre Writers’ Scheme, is one of the most prestigious awards for new writing in British theatre. It awards up to five bursaries a year, each worth £7,000, to writers of outstanding promise and allows the playwright a twelve-month attachment to a theatre and commissions the writers for a new play. Recipients of the bursaries for 2008 will be announced later this month. The Scheme also offers an award for the Best Play written by the five bursary winners from the previous year. This new award, worth £10,000, has been generously donated by Catherine Johnson, a graduate of the Scheme and herself the winner of the Best Play written in 1991. Catherine, who is a member of the judging panel for new bursaries and author of Mamma Mia!, has been looking for a way to give something back to the Scheme which helped and encouraged her in the early days of her career. Judges of the Pearson Award include Sir John Mortimer CBE QC, Dame Beryl Bainbridge, Catherine Johnson, Sue Summers, Thelma Holt CBE, Michael Billington, John Tydeman OBE and Jack Andrews MBE. Previous recipients of the Pearson bursary over the last thirty years include Richard Bean, Alan Bleasdale, Gregory Burke, David Edgar, David Eldridge, Lee Hall, Jacqueline Holborough, Catherine Johnson, Charlotte Jones, Fin Kennedy, Hanif Kureshi, Nick Leather, Martin McDonagh, Gary Mitchell, Chloe Moss, Gary Owen, Joe Penhall, Winsome Pinnock, Billy Roche, Simon Stephens, Sue Townsend and Timberlake Wertenbaker. James Graham is Playwright-in-Residence at the Finborough Theatre. He has written three plays – commissioned by Artistic Director Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre - Albert's Boy (2005), starring Victor Spinetti, which earned him a Pearson Award bursary, Eden's Empire (2006) and Little Madam (2007). He was the Finborough Theatre’s nomination to the BBC and Royal Court’s programme for young writers, ‘The 50’, celebrating the Royal Court’s 50th anniversary. His original television comedy-drama, Caught in a Trap, has been commissioned by producers Greenlit.
Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
|
||
|
|
