Bruntwood and the Royal Exchange Theatre have announced the shortlist for The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2025.
This year the Prize celebrates 20 years of an incredible partnership between leading commercial property developer Bruntwood, The Oglesby Charitable Trust and world-class producing theatre, the Royal Exchange Theatre. The Prize continues to champion established, emerging and debut writers in their work for the stage, celebrating new ideas and stories.
15 plays have been shortlisted from the 100-play longlist to be considered across four categories. 10 plays from the UK are in the running for two categories: overall winner of the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, who takes home £20,000, as well as the Judges Award worth £10,000.
Two of those plays are in the running for the North-West Original New Voice Award which includes a funded year-long residency at the Royal Exchange Theatre, in recognition of the Prize’s Manchester home. In addition, five further plays are eligible for the International Award, who have applied through partners in Australia, Canada and the US.
All winners engage with the Royal Exchange Theatre to explore ways to bring their work to production, with the winner of the North West Original New Voice Award and Residency also having access to an additional £10,000 fund dedicated to their professional development at the Royal Exchange Theatre, during a bespoke one-year residency in partnership with Bruntwood and the Oglesby Charitable Trust.
This year’s shortlist takes us on a journey from a farm in rural Sussex to the chaotic offices of a gaming studio, via visions of Ted Cruz, 1940s Harlem and the Chernobyl exclusion zone. These plays are full of a wealth of vivid characters, an aspiring Korean pro-golfer, a father and daughter carefully moving out of the pandemic, pre-teens with an enthusiasm for religious iconography, and a Mancunian teenager who dreams of being a dog.
It’s a list filled with epic storytelling and formal experimentation: we take a kaleidoscopic look at a women’s life through her relationships with men, share in the musicality of two lovers reuniting and experience the horror of a group of New England parents’ secrets. Our writers have produced stories that pack an emotional punch, from the regrets of a barber caught between his daughter and the woman who’s waited for him, to the demands of an audacious woman to her boyfriend’s brother, to the quietly devastating conversations between a group of 9th graders at lunchtime.
Of the shortlist, four are first time playwrights, who have had their first full-length play shortlisted – storyteller and creative Tolu Okanlawon, writer and spoken word poet Yasmine Dankwah, playwright, poet, performer and activist Daniel Grimston and playwright, producer, graphic designer and journalist Daisy Miles.
Shortlisted playwrights also carry a wealth of experience from writing hit shows for our TV screens to developing shows for the stage. Abbi Greenland, founding member of theatre company RashDash, sees her play shortlisted along with Ava Wong Davies, consulting producer from Season 3 of INDUSTRY (BBC/HBO) and writer on the upcoming THE GIRLFRIEND (Amazon Prime). Author Courttia Newland wrote on Steve McQueen’s five-part anthology film series SMALL AXE (BBC), and 2023’s THE WOMAN IN THE WALL (BBC). Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, who was a story editor on WHY WOMEN KILL (CBS Studios), is up for this year’s International Award.
Four playwrights represented on this year’s shortlist teach on some of the leading playwriting programmes at universities across the globe – New York-based writer and theatre artist T Adamson teaches at Purchase College, Julia Jarcho is Head of the MFA Playwriting Program at Brown University and Seayoung Yim is a Playwriting and Beginning Screenwriting teacher at Brown University. These writers are all shortlisted for the International Award. Lecturer and module leader at Bath Spa University, Silva Semerciyan has been shortlisted for the second time in the prize’s history this year, after last being shortlisted in 2011.
Terri Jade Donovan and Daisy Miles have both trained in the Royal Exchange’s Young Company of Writers, and are both in the running for this year’s new North West Original New Voice Award.
The shortlisted scripts are as follows (listed alphabetically by surname):
The Annunciation by T. Adamson
Dream Body by Natasha Collie
rite to party by Yasmine Dankwah
DOG DOG DOG by Terri Jade Donovan
Talking to Boys by Abbi Greenland
Corpselight by Daniel Grimston
The Plan by Mary Elizabeth Hamilton
Coziness by Julia Jarcho
R Lady’s by Daisy Miles
TRIM PALACE by Courttia Newland
SHOOTERS by Tolu Okanlawon
Przewalski’s Horses by Silva Semerciyan
SPREAD by Jesús I. Valles
Voyagers by Ava Wong Davies
golf girl by Seayoung Yim
Selina Cartmell, Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre and Judge for the 2025 Prize, said: “Sharing the shortlist for The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting is an extraordinary moment as it honours the courage of 15 unique voices who have crafted new worlds and stories to provoke, entertain and challenge in equal measure. Over one afternoon, my fellow judges and I discussed and debated these brilliantly eclectic group of plays that have been shortlisted. Choosing a winner was almost impossible, and I cannot wait to see extracts from each of these brilliant scripts staged in our unique in-the-round auditorium at the Royal Exchange Theatre next month.”
The Judges will announce the winner of the 2025 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting at an awards ceremony at the Royal Exchange Theatre on 21 July 2025, with a selection of tickets on sale for the first time ever.
The 15 scripts have been judged by a panel of prestigious names across the arts industry, including renowned journalist and broadcaster Naga Munchetty; award winning theatre-maker, director and producer and Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre, Selina Cartmell; previous Bruntwood Prize winner, Pheobe Eclair-Powell; award-winning playwright and director, Conor McPherson; international award-winning director and Artistic Director of London’s Kiln Theatre, Amit Sharma; actors, Shobna Gulati and Cherylee Houston, and Munya Chawawa, a BAFTA-nominated broadcaster, writer and comedian, and 2022 British Comedy Awards Breakthrough Talent winner.
Naga Munchetty, Chair of the Anniversary judging panel, said:
“It takes tenacity and bravery to put pen to paper and having just written my first book I know what a huge leap of faith it is to then show that to others, invite them to read it and give feedback. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to read these plays and to discuss and debate them with my fellow judges. The shortlisted writers are all brilliant and the task of choosing a winner was difficult to say the least. I feel very lucky to have read 15 brand-new plays, because it is very rare to be able to read something that so few people have seen. I want to give huge congratulations to all 15 writers on this shortlist and thank them for trusting us with their work. “
