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Dateline: 30th October, 2007
Meyer-Whitworth Award Winner Announced The winner of the 16th Meyer-Whitworth Award for new writing in theatre was announced at a ceremony at the National Theatre on 30th October 2007. The award went to Morna Pearson for her play Distracted (Traverse Theatre, 2006). The Meyer-Whitworth Award is given annually to a writer whose play shows a developing new talent. The winner embodies Geoffrey Whitworth’s dictum that 'drama is important in so far as it reveals the truth about the relationships of human beings with each other and the world at large'.
The award was established in 1991 to commemorate members of the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre Committee, which had been set up in 1908 to campaign for a national theatre. Royal National Theatre Foundation donates the £10,000 prize. Distracted is the surreal and funny story of Jamie Purdy who finds himself in a run down residential caravan park in Morayshire. He is looking for something. He’s looking under the rocks, he’s observing the beasties, he’s even asked the chicken on the packet of corn. Problem is, he’s got no idea what’s he’s looking for. Out here on the edge he finds George-Michael Skinner and his young mother Bunny. A mother and son partnership whose unconventional view of the world might throw light on the origin of Jamie’s species. Morna Pearson was born in Elgin, Scotland, but now lives in Edinburgh. Her earliest play Untogether was developed whilst she was part of the Traverse Theatre’s Young Writers Group in 2002/03 and was given a public performed reading at the Royal Court Theatre as part of their 2004 Young Writers’ Festival, and produced in Sydney by the Australian Theatre for Young People. Her first professional play Distracted was commissioned and produced by the Traverse Theatre in November 2006, and was subsequently nominated for Best New Play at the 2006/07 Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland. In 2006 she co-wrote internet drama JCN16 with Raindog Productions and won the inaugural Rod Hall Memorial Award, which includes representation by Rod Hall Literary Agency and a commission for Paines Plough. She is currently under commission to the Traverse Theatre for a second play, and to BBC Radio Scotland. "I'm very fond of Distracted, my first professional play," she said, "and I'm continually amazed and encouraged by the overall reaction to it. Particularly as it's my portrayal of a small, colourful section of my native North-East Scotland."
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