Meyer-Whitworth Award

The Meyer-Whitworth Award was a literary prize established in 1991 and awarded from 1992 until 2011 to new British playwrights to help them further their careers. The £10,000 prize, one of the largest annual prizes for play writing in the UK, was funded by the National Theatre Foundation and named in honour of Geoffrey Whitworth and Carl Meyer, both of whom were instrumental in the establishment of the Royal National Theatre. From its inception until 2006, the award was administered by Arts Council England. After that, it was administered by the Playwrights' Studio, Scotland.^[1]

According to the Playwrights' Studio, the award was given to the writer whose play best embodied Geoffrey Whitworth's view that "drama is important in so far as it reveals the truth about the relationships of human beings with each other and the world at large", showed promise of a developing new talent, and whose writing displayed an individual quality.^[2] The first recipient of the Meyer-Whitworth Award was Roy MacGregor for his play Our Own Kind. ^[3]

List of winners

• 1992 Roy MacGregor for Our Own Kind ^[4]

• 1993 Philip Ridley for The Fastest Clock in the Universe

• 1994 Diane Samuels for Kindertransport

• 1995 Jointly to Terry Johnson for Hysteria and Billy Roche for The Cavalcaders

• 1996 Michael Wynne for The Knocky

• 1997 Conor McPherson for This Lime Tree Bower

• 1998 Jointly to Moira Buffini for Gabriel and Daragh Carville for Language Roulette

• 1999 David Harrower for Kill the Old Torture their Young

• 2000 Kate Dean for Down Red Lane

• 2001 Ray Grewal for My Dad’s Corner Shop

• 2002 Jointly to Gregory Burke for Gagarin Way and Henry Adam for Among Broken Hearts

• 2003 Gary Owen for Shadow of a Boy

• 2004 Owen McCafferty for Scenes from the Big Picture

• 2005 Stephen Thompson for Damages

• 2006 Dennis Kelly for Osama the Hero

• 2007 Morna Pearson for Distracted

• 2008 Hassan Abdulrazzak for Baghdad Wedding

• 2009 Ali Taylor for Cotton Wool

• 2010 Natasha Langridge for Shraddha

• 2011 David Ireland for Everything Between Us

References

1. Smith, Alistair (24 October 2006). "Writing prizes in danger as ACE halts involvement". The Stage. Retrieved 14 January 2013.
2. Playwrights' Studio, Scotland (October 2011). "20th Meyer-Whitworth Award - Winner Announced". Retrieved 14 January 2013.
3. Dromgoole, Dominic (13 October 1997). "A life in two acts:. The Independent. Retrieved 14 January 2013.
4. This list is sourced from Playwrights' Studio, Scotland (October 2011).