Clive Judd wins 14th annual Papatango New Writing Prize

Photo credit: Jay Mason-Burns

Papatango have announced that Clive Judd has won the 14th annual Papatango New Writing Prize for his debut full-length play, Here, from a record 1,553 entries.

Also announced today are the other shortlisted writers: Georgia Bruce for Time, Like The Sea; Jennifer Lunn for Core; Esme Mahoney for Wishbone, and Dilan Raithatha for Little India. The four shortlisted plays will receive filmed readings, broadcast for a global network on The Playwright’s Laboratory.

The winning play Here will have its world première at The Large, Southwark Playhouse, London from 11 November – 3 December, directed by Papatango’s Artistic Director George Turvey.

A family packs into a small house with a tangled history. Matt is here, yearning to reach someone he’s lost. His cousin Jess is here, too; she just wants to feel something. Anything. And Aunt Monica and Jeff are still here, just about. Together, ferocious and funny, they laugh, they scrap, they remember.

Tonight these four people, inextricably bound yet so far apart, will finally confront the old decisions that haunt them. How does a family make a future, when everything that holds it together lies in the past?

Clive Judd said: “It is a huge honour to be named the 2022 Papatango Prize winner. Writing has always formed an integral part of my life; it is through the stories of other people that I have been able to pursue avenues of creativity and thought that may otherwise have remained closed to me. But it has taken me the best part of twenty years to build the courage to share my own. It means the world to me that my quiet play about ordinary, working folk from the West Midlands has received this recognition from one of my favourite new writing companies.”