 |
|
|
||||
|
News
|
||||
|
News
|
Dateline: 10th October, 2008
Lavery Wins 2008 Whiting Award The winner of this year's John Whiting Award, now supported by the Peter Wolff Theatre Trust and known as "The Peter Wolff Theatre Trust Supports The Whiting Award", is Bryony Lavery for her play Stockholm. Last year, the Peter Wolff Theatre Trust announced that it would be funding the Whiting Award after a consortium of theatres, headed by London’s Hampstead Theatre, claimed ownership of this prestigious award from the Arts Council. Hampstead Theatre set up a consortium of new writing companies and venues, including the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, London’s Royal Court, Soho Theatre, Paines Plough, Nottingham Playhouse, Traverse Theatre, The Bush Theatre, Nuffield Southampton, and Birmingham Repertory Theatre. To be eligible to enter for the award the play must be:
The Judges used the following criteria to decide the award:
Ben Jankovich, former Literary Manager of Hampstead Theatre and now Senior Reader for the National Theatre, who chaired the judging panel, said that for two years no award had been given becasue of the very high standards required. “This is a highly esteemed award," he said." This year we received an unprecedented 84 scripts, which all the judges read, and standards were so high that, in addition to the shortlist, we selected a longlist of sixteen special commendations. It took us four hours to reach a decision on the winner and we all agreed how extraordinary it was that Bryony Lavery, who has written so many plays and honed her craft, was not afraid to experiment with style, form and content to reinvent the form each time.” Prsenting the award at the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse theatres, Peter Wolff said, "“This is a fond trip for me personally to come back to Liverpool after many years, but it is also exciting for the Trust to be continuing our hard work to help promote new plays, particularly in these difficult times when productions are losing investment due to the current uncertainty in the banking world. In the West End, theatres are playing safer and safer with their programming choices and this, in my opinion, is no way of keeping the theatre world alive.” “I am overcome with emotion," Bryony Lavery said iun response." It is a wonderful thing to have won this award for Stockholm. It was a lovely play to create and a complete joy to work with Frantic Assembly, to which I owe a great deal. I am honoured and thrilled to win this award, especially in consideration of the other writers on the shortlist.” The other plays on the shortlist were Free Outgoing by Anupama Chandrasekhar (Royal Court), The Pitman Painters by Lee Hall (Live Theatre Newcastle & National Theatre), Static by Dan Rebellato (Suspect Culture & Graeae), Harper Regan by Simon Stephens (National Theatre) and Flight Path by David Watson (Bush Theatre).
Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
|
|||
|
|
