During this public health emergency, the safety and wellbeing of our staff, artists, audiences and families comes first.

We are exploring ways in which we can all remain connected and optimistic. The Bruntwood Prize has always been about much more than the winners. It is about opening up playwriting to anyone and everyone, to support anyone interested in playwriting to explore the unique power of creative expression. Therefore we want to make this website a resource now for anyone and everyone to explore theatre and plays and playwriting. 

So we will be highlighting the many different resources archived on this website over the coming weeks.

For me debbie tucker green is a writer who’s plays stick in your throat and punch you in the gut.

This might not sound like an enjoyable experience, but for me it’s always a memorable night at the theatre watching one of her plays.

As a writer I see dialogue as music. A score of sorts that the actors bring their own instrument to.

For me, debbie tucker greens dialogue is virtuosic. Every word has power, meaning, and nuance. Every interruption and pause is carefully calculated.

Her language can be blunt and sharp, darkly funny and, poetical but without ever feeling forced. One of the best examples of this is in her unflinching play, HANG.

A story of a woman who has had a crime committed against her and her family. She now has the power to determine her perpetrators fate. Not his sentence, but how he will die.

The play is brutal and probing. Structually it is one continuous scene. I’ve picked a speech played by the mother, known simply as THREE as she describes to her two careworkers how the events have effected her children.

EXTRACT FROM HANG by debbie tucker green (1)