The Women’s Prize for Playwriting, produced by Ellie Keel and Paines Plough, have announced that submissions for this year’s prize open on 16 January.

The Prize is designed to celebrate and champion exceptional playwrights who identify as female or non-binary by providing them with a national platform. The Prize is awarded to a full-length play (defined as over 60 minutes in length), written in English, and the winning playwright wins £12,000.

Submissions close on 17 April, with the longlist set to be announced early October. The finalist scripts will be announced in November, and an Awards Ceremony will be held in December. 

In its inaugural year, two First Prizes of £12,000 were awarded. The first was to Reasons You Should(n’t) Love Me by Amy Trigg – which premièred at Kiln Theatre to critical acclaim in May 2021 and embarked on a UK tour in 2022, directed by Joint Artistic Director of Paines Plough Charlotte Bennett, with an audio version produced by Audible the following month. The second was to You Bury Me by Ahlam, directed by Joint-Artistic Director of Paines Plough Katie Posner, which had a staged reading at the Lyceum Theatre in August as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, and has been developed for a major production this Spring at Bristol Old Vic, the Royal Lyceum Theatre and the Orange Tree Theatre directed by Joint-Artistic Director Katie Posner and co-produced with Paines Plough, WPP, 45North, the Lyceum, the Orange Tree Theatre, in association with Bristol Old Vic. Consumed by Karis Kelly was the 2021 winning script, and the play is currently in development for production, with further details to be announced.

The judges for this year’s Prize, chaired by Artistic Director of Kiln Theatre Indhu Rubasingham, are journalist Samira Ahmed, playwrights April de Angelis and Chris Bush, actor Noma Dumezweni, literary agent Mel Kenyon, journalist and critic Anya Ryan, Head of Play Development at the National Theatre, Nina Steiger, and Guardian Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner. 

Open Zoom sessions with information for potential entrants, and an opportunity to ask questions about the process will be held on 25 January and 22 February.

Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Playwriting, Ellie Keel, said: “It feels very fitting that we're opening submissions for the 2023 Prize just as rehearsals begin for YOU BURY ME, our major production and tour of the play that won in 2020. I'm so excited about this year’s Prize – about reading the brilliant submissions from writers and working with our reading team and judges to find our longlist, shortlist and 'Final Five', and ultimately the winning play. It continues to be an absolute joy to be at the helm of this campaign to level the playing field, which sadly is more necessary than ever given that recent research has shown that in 2022 men accounted for 74% of credited writers in UK theatre. This is an unacceptable state of affairs which we're determined to change.”

Details on how to submit plays is available here.