Be an Angel!

How it works

Join a radical new scheme to ‘buy time’ for struggling new playwrights to write!

The Adopt a Playwright Award gathers individual donors together to help playwrights of quality, who have had at least one play staged and come from backgrounds that offer little encouragement or financial support, to find the time and financial backing to go on writing and take their place among our culture’s storytellers.

Some £90,000 has been raised to date and twelve playwrights adopted. The Adopt a Playwright Award was launched in 2008 by Sofie and Diana, gathering individual donors together to raise £8,000 per year to help playwrights of quality but of limited means. It seemed to us that there were no schemes that saved penniless playwrights at the beginning of their careers from giving up and getting a 'proper job' so we shaped this award to be as close and as supportive as each playwright needs us to be. We start by asking for recommendations in October/November…

Kenny Emson

Jane Wainwright

Without this award I have no idea where I would be. Or what I would be doing. But I know I would be half the writer I am now."

The lovely thing about Sofie and Diana is that they continue to offer their support, and provide a space for new writers to come together and feel connected to each other.

find out more...

Without this award I have no idea where I would be. Or what I would be doing. But I know I would be half the writer I am now.”
Kenny Emson

Be an Angel!

Join a radical new scheme to ‘buy time’ for struggling new playwrights to write!

find out more

The lovely thing about Sofie and Diana is that they continue to offer their support, and provide a space for new writers to come together and feel connected to each other.
Jane Wainwright

How it works

Some £80,000 has been raised to date and ten playwrights adopted. The Adopt a Playwright Award was launched in 2008 by Sofie and Diana, gathering individual donors together to raise £8,000 per year to help playwrights of quality but of limited means. It seemed to us that there were no schemes that saved penniless playwrights at the beginning of their careers from giving up and getting a ‘proper job’ so we shaped this award to be as close and as supportive as each playwright needs us to be. We start by asking for recommendations in October/November…

find out more

This year’s winner

This year we are delighted to introduce Isabel Dixon who is writing a play about ‘gaslighting’. Inspired by the recent changes to domestic violence laws in the UK, the play sets out to expose the dark underbelly of a relationship distorted by coercive control and emotional abuse. Tom loves Holly and Holly loves Tom. But as their all-consuming bond begins to rot from the inside out, neither can agree on the reality of what’s unfolding. As both tell the audience the story of their relationship from beginning to end, we’re asked to question whose side we’re on. This will be a play not only about domestic violence, but about narratives – how we construct them, whose stories we believe over others, and how reality can be manipulated beyond recognition.

Previous winners

Paul Anthony Morris was the first playwright chosen for the scheme in 2008 and, with your help, completed his new play IDENTITY about the fall-out in the UK from the Grenada Revolution. Pericles Snowdon became the second playwright to win the award in 2009 and completed an extraordinary piece on Romany gypsies, THEY WHO LAY IN THE FIELDS LIKE BEASTS. Kenneth Emson followed in 2010 writing WHITE, a brutally honest story about his home town in Thurrock that was shortlisted to the final ten for The Bruntwood Prize. Sarah Grochala was our fourth winner in 2011 writing SMOLENSK inspired by the events unfolding after the Polish plane crash on 10 April 2010. Clara Brennan completed her year as the fifth winner with her smouldering new play THE VENDOR.

Satinder Chohan wrote a shocking new piece on fertility clinics, MOTHER INDIA, in the sixth year. Steven Hevey then flexed his muscles writing two dramatically different plays in 2014 – APOPHIS and KING FOR A DAY. Rose Ruane was our eighth winner in 2015 completing CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE POLTERGEIST, a play about the power of memory and the pain of anonymity. Our ninth, Adam Hughes, completed his year with a tough new play YOUNG GIRL that raises controversial questions about the human cost and political gain behind Operation Yewtree. Olga Nikora also finished two hard hitting plays – STROIKA and LEAVE TO REMAIN – about war and trauma both in the Ukraine and around a London dinner table. Our twelfth, Ryan Calais Cameron, spun back to the 1950s to a vivid recreation of Sidney Poitier confronting McCarthyism and racism.

Our Foster Children

CHRISTOPHER YORK

Speech! Speech!

Playwright Fin Kennedy’s speech at the launch of the Adopt A Playwright Award

Guidelines

for selection of candidates

With huge thanks to our growing family of Angels

Archangels

Anon
Sofie Mason
Nicholas Payne

Angels

Anonymous
Susan Adams
Bill & Nini Aldridge
George Aza-Selinger
John Bakewell
Primrose Bell
Katrina Bennett
John Bird
Annie Blaber
Lanier Brannen
Clive Brill
David Chiltern
Terence Chisholm
Bernice Chitnis
Ann Clifford
Kay Ellen Consolver
Debbie Cowley
Chris Crowcroft
Caroline Margaret Day
Victoria Dickie
Cas Donald
David Donegan
Zuleika Dobson
Vineeta Dufficy
Bernadette Earley
Sascha Evans
Oliver Everett
Siri Fisher Hansen
Emily Fletcher
Joachim Fleury
John & Bea Flynn
Francesca Franchi
Laura Gallo
Pooja Ghai
David Hare
Jessica Hepburn
Tracy Hilliard
Alison Hindell
Bernard Ho
Frankie & Theo Holloway
Diana Jervis-Read
Margaret Levin
Janine Limberg
Richard & Kath Lynam
Mary Martin
Jocelyn Mason
Anne Mayer
Seth Melhado
Gerry Moss
Nicholas Payne
Linda Plant
Seven Prevezer
Emma Reeves
Suzanne Reid
Sebastian Rex
Mirium Ryley
Wendy Salisbury
John Sandy
Jon Satow
Jenny Sheridan
Carol & Peter Slavid
Geraldine Sharpe Newton
Tom Stoppard
Bob & Gael Strong
Tori Stroud
Pauline Tambling
Paul & Kathy Wade
Janet Walsh
Camilla Whitworth Jones
Elwyn Williams
Jo Wright

Advisory Panel to date

George Aza-Selinger
Clive Brill
Declan Feenan
Joachim Fleury
Blayne George
James Haddrell
Pippa Hill
Alison Hindell
Holly Kendrick
Fin Kennedy
David Lan
Walter Meierjohann
Kerry Michael
Paul Morris
Pericles Snowdon
Julia Tyrrel
Camilla Whitworth Jones

Facilitator:
Sadie Keenan

To make a donation please make a bank transfer to:

Off West End Plays & Playwrights
Charitable Aid Foundation
Sort code: 40-52-40
Account: 00023389

Thank You!