The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting is a genuine endeavor to discover new stories and help playwrights develop their craft, providing everybody and anybody with the opportunity to write a play. It offers a fantastic opportunity to hone your writing skills, whether or not you have written for the stage before (35% of the entrants to the 2017 Prize had never written a play before). In addition to a high proportion of winning and shortlisted plays being produced professionally, each of the top 100 plays receives individual feedback from the Royal Exchange Theatre’s creative team

This year, to complement our regular on-line writing workshops we have created a 10-week online playwriting toolkit for anyone who hasn’t written for the stage before.

If you’re a first time writer or thinking of making a move from poetry or prose this brand new toolkit has some great advice on how to get your play started. Each week builds on the previous weeks with illustrative extracts from the writers own work, and further reading and exercises suggested from the Bruntwood Prize site archives.

The toolkit includes…

• Getting Started is by Suzanne Bell, Royal Exchange Theatre Dramaturg.
• Character– with Kendall Feaver (Bruntwood Prize Judges Award winning playwright and UK Theatre Award winner)
• Get the characters talking to each other – creating a scene- with playwright Simon Longman
• Dramatic Action with playwright Insook Chapell
• Asking a Question –with playwright Chinonyerem Odimba
• Story – with Tim Foley (Bruntwood Prize Judges Award winner)
• Structure/Form and Content– with Playwright James Fritz (Bruntwood Prize Judges Award winner)
• Imagery and Metaphor– with playwright Zodwa Nyoni
• Thinking Theatrically– with playwright Lizzie Nunnery
• Re-drafting and getting ready to submit– with playwright Frances Poet

Alongside this toolkit are 6 exciting brand-new livestreamed workshops for 2019.  Led by internationally recognised playwrights these six session are completely free to access and will augment a growing archive of workshops created for the Bruntwood Prize. All of which can be accessed on this site. This year’s sessions include…

• David Eldridge – Telling story as dramatic action: making backstory active and other tips, notes and thoughts- archived here to watch 
• Jo Clifford–  on Imagery, Metaphor and Meaning  – archived her to watch
• Patricia Cornelius- Lovely, lovely, sometimes ugly dialogue-  March 25^th with Playwriting Australia. 8AM GMT
• Winsome Pinnock on the relationship between the epic and the intimate in writing for the stage – Thursday 18 April
• Naomi Iizuka- Telling Ghost Stories– April 26th with Berkeley Rep- 9.30PM GMT
• Tanika Gupta on how you might explore your work to ensure that the story you want to tell is clear, dramatic and theatrical – Monday 22 May

To take part in the workshops, simply visit the site on the date listed! Workshops will be livestreamed from 6pm-8pm, then archived on the Bruntwood Prize Youtube and linked to this site. To see our archive of past livestream workshops in 2015 and 2017 please go to-https://www.writeaplay.co.uk/writing-resources/ 

Of course, check back for regular news posts, blog posts from the 2019 Readers and opportunities updates throughout 2019. If there is something you’d like to see on the writeaplay site- get in touch via bruntwood.prize@royalexchange.co.uk