Theatres need 'thriving' literary departments not just writing prizes – bosses

Theatres must maintain thriving literary departments and welcome unsolicited commissions in a new-writing landscape that increasingly relies on prizes, leaders of playwriting awards have claimed. 

Directors, producers and dramaturgs behind prizes including the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting and the Papatango New Writing Prize expressed concern about the disappearance of other routes for new plays to get produced in a panel at Soho Theatre chaired by Matthew Xia. 

Outgoing dramaturg at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Suzanne Bell, who oversees the Bruntwood Prize, said the format, which necessitates a single winner, made her feel "uncomfortable".

"I feel really icky about the notion of one winner," she told the panel, adding: "I think it is really important that we drill down into how we support the wider ecology all the time, at every stage of the process." 

Responding to Xia’s provocation that "prizes increasingly feel like they’re the only way of new writers being produced", Bell vouched for the importance of well-resourced literary departments alongside awards. 

"It needs to be both," she said. "It would be awful if it was just competitions."

Bell, who recently announced her move from the Royal Exchange to Wales’ Theatr Clwyd, continued: "What makes me uncomfortable about competitions if literary departments go is that then writers are being asked to write on spec, and spend an awful lot of time and emotional energy writing full-length plays. 

"If you don’t have a commissioning budget and a R&D budget alongside that, the risk is that it will become the people who have the privilege to have time to write plays without payment."

Papatango co-founder George Turvey agreed that "in an ideal world you’d have both".

"I don’t think it should be just prizes, which unfortunately is becoming more and more the case," he said.

Turvey reflected on a shift since the inception of annual new-writing prize 16 years ago, telling the panel that prizes have "now become the thing that everybody relies upon to find new writers".

"That isn’t the way it should be," he went on. "There needs to be [prizes] that give everybody the impetus to write and a way in and an open door that feels welcoming, but there should also be well-funded literary departments that offer unsolicited commissions, and also offer commissions and other routes into buildings that unfortunately I think are disappearing."  

Continues...