The Society for Theatre Research has announced the judges for this year’s Theatre Book Prize as being actress, director and author Nichola McAuliffe, critic, academic and author Aleks Sierz and museum curator and author Cathy Haill. The panel will be chaired by British Theatre Guide's own regular London critic Howard Loxton.
The prize is awarded annually to a new book first published in English about the history, practice and performance of British or British related theatre, embracing all aspects and periods of theatrical activity.
Entry is now open and closes mid-January 2017. A shortlist will be announced in early spring with an award event following later in 2017 on a date still to be decided. Publishers of eligible titles should contact [email protected] for further details.
About the judges
Nichola Mcauliffe
Well known for her work her theatre work, Nichola has won the Olivier Award Winner for Best Actress in a Musical for her Kate in Kiss Me Kate and the Clarence Derwent Award for her Queen Victoria (both for the RSC), the Manchester Evening News Award for her performance in The Wlld Duck (Peter Hall Company) and the Stage Edinburgh Best Actress Award twice. Arnold Wesker wrote Caritas and Annie Wobbler for her. She is also an established author with The Crime Tsar and A Fanny Full of Soap, her comic account of a pre-West End musical failure, and children’s book Attila Loolagax and the Eagle. Her play A British Subject transferred to off-Broadway and Maurice's Jubilee followed its Edinburgh première with a national tour and is currently in the repertoire of the Moscow Art Theatre which presented her with The Stanislavsky Award and Medal. She has just directed The Dover Road at Jermyn St Theatre and is currently appearing in the ITV series Victoria as The Duchess of Cumberland.
Aleks Sierz
Aleks Sierz is a journalist, broadcaster and theatre critic at large, a member of the UK Critics’ Circle and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. He is Senior Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College and a member of the three-year research project Ethical Issues in Contemporary British Theatre since 1989: Globalisation, Theatricality, Spectatorship at Barcelona University. He is the author and editor of numerous books on modern British theatre including In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today and Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today.
Cathy Haill
Cathy Haill is Curator for Popular Entertainment with the V & A Theatre and Performance Collections. She is co-author of a guide to the former Theatre Museum as well as books on entertainment topics including Theatre Posters and Victorian Illustrated Music Sheets.
Former winners have ranged from theatre histories and actor biographies to academic studies and show the scope of the prize which was establish to commemorate the Society’s Jubilee.
Previous winners of the prize
- 1997 The Life of Margaret Ramsay, Play Agent by Colin Chambers (Nick Hern)
- 1998 Threads of Time by Peter Brook (Methuen)
- 1999 Garrick by Ian McIntyre (Allen Lane)
- 2000 Politics, Prudery and Perversion.... Censorship 1906-68 by Nicholas de Jongh (Methuen)
- 2001 Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing, 1840-1880 by Jim Davis & Victor Emeljanow (Iowa University Press/University of Hertfordshire Press)
- 2002 A History of Irish Theatre 1601-2000 by Christopher Morash (Cambridge University Press)
- 2003 National Service by Richard Eyre (Bloomsbury)
- 2004 Margot Fonteyn by Meredith Daneman (Penguin/Viking)
- 2005 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro (Faber & Faber)
- 2006 John Osborne: A Patriot for Us by John Heilpern (Chatto & Windus)
- 2007 State of the Nation by Michael Billington (Faber & Faber)
- 2008 Theatre and Globalisation: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era by Patrick Lonergan (Palgrave Macmillan)
- 2009 Different Drummer: the Life of Kenneth Macmillan by Jann Parry (Faber & Faber)
- 2010 The Reluctant Escapologist by Mike Bradwell (Nick Hern Books)
- 2011 Covering McKellen by David Weston (Rickshaw Publishing)
- 2012 Mr Foote's Other Leg by Ian Kelly (Picador)
- 2013 The National Theatre Story by Daniel Rosenthal (Oberon)
- 2014 Oliver! A Dickensian Musical by Marc Napolitano (Oxford University Press)
- 2015 The Censorship of British Drama 1900-1968 by Steve Nicholson (University of Exeter Press)