Carmen Marcus’s play And The Earth Opened Up Under Her that transfers an ancient myth into contemporary England has won the Faber New Play Award.
The Award is given for the best play written by an unpublished playwright under the WGGB New Play Commission Scheme that was set up in a response to the drop in writing commissions as a result of the global pandemic.
Marcus will receive the prize of £5,000, and her play will be published at the time of its première; it was commissioned by Pilot Theatre, York.
And The Earth Opened Up Under Her was selected by a judging panel made of playwrights Dipo Baruwa-Etti and Beth Steel, dramaturg and translator Chris Campbell and Lily Levinson and Dinah Wood from Faber.
Carmen Marcus said, “this fever-dream of a play is a working-class reimagining of the Persephone and Demeter myth. It intertwines the stories of scoundrels my Irish mother told me, the wolfish fairytales I loved, Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. It is set on the North East coast of England, where the hellish blast furnace fumed over the dunes and wild woods of my childhood.
"This play is a keening written in the same year I lost my mother, Bridget, to dementia. My mum always said she’d go to hell and back for us and this is that journey laid bare—what hell looks like for girls, women and mothers as they negotiate the underworlds of their fears and desires.
"Winning this award means so much. I took so many creative and emotional risks writing this play, I had so many doubts about the work—about making the leap to playwriting, the strange poetic voices of the characters, the kinds of hells I wanted to make. I’m blown away that the Faber team saw potential within this strange imagining and selected it for the award. The award brings that all-important validation for a working-class story about the dangers that girls must navigate, and is a huge boost on the journey towards staging this tale.
"And The Earth Opened Up Under Her began with a serendipitous chat with Esther Richardson of Pilot Theatre, York, who approached me to work on their Northern Girls project, though I had never written for theatre before. We discovered we went to the same Catholic primary school in Redcar, ruled over by the indomitable Mrs MacDonagh, an inspirational female force to be reckoned with. It was Esther who suggested I apply for the New Play Commission Scheme. I will be eternally grateful for her steadfast belief in my writing.”