The Pearson Playwrights’ Scheme may be little known, but it definitely knows how to pick a winner, in every sense: amongst the writers whose work it has helped nurture in the most meaningful way possible – i.e. by the awarding of five bursaries (worth £6,500 each) that enables them to actually write, and then a competitive prize for the best play of the year to have emerged from the previous year’s stable of writers who have thus been able to write them – are such now-established writers as David Eldridge, Samuel Adamson, Richard Bean, Simon Stephens, Tanika Gupta, Stephen Poliakoff, Nell Leyshon, Carol Ann Duffy, Catherine Johnson, Charlotte Jones, Lee Hall, Martin McDonagh, Joe Penhall, Gregory Burke and – this year’s winner – Laura Wade.
At an intimate lunch held yesterday in the boardroom of Pearson’s London HQ – the old Shell building, overlooking the Thames that one has often gazed at from the other side of the river from the National Theatre’s terraces – Laura was joined by Neil McPherson of the Finborough Theatre that had first put her up for consideration for a Pearson bursary two years ago, and her literary agent, Charlotte Mann, to receive the Best Play award (and a £2000 cheque) for Breathing Corpses, produced by the Royal Court last year. (Wade also took the Critics’ Circle prize for Most Promising Playwright for both that play and Colder than Here, seen at Soho Theatre, where her latest play also coincidentally opens next week).
But the symbolic value of the prize is even more important than the financial one (though the financial one no doubt also helps), for it is awarded by a very high profile panel that is chaired by John Mortimer and includes amongst its members Dame Beryl Bainbridge, journalist and film producer Sue Summers, John Tydeman of the Peggy Ramsay Foundation and award administrator Jack Andrews (all of whom were also in attendance yesterday), plus producer Thelma Holt, critic Michael Billington and playwright Catherine Johnson. The lunch party of twelve was also completed by two people from Pearson’s, including David Bell, and two critics (Charlie Spencer and me).
As someone who goes to judge new plays on a regular basis, it was fascinating to hear how the stage before we get to see them can operate, with nurture playing as much a part as nature in making a good new playwright.
Another venue both welcoming by nature as well as nurture has been the Menier Chocolate Factory, which in exactly two short years has taken itself to the top of the creative tree of fringe producing spaces, and last night took the night off to celebrate across the river with a birthday party at Joe Allen’s. And it proved, as always, that beyond the indefinable magic of the place it’s also the tangible magic of the people who work there that make it so special. The Menier is a phenomenal success, both onstage and off, and last night – from actors to press agents to waiters and yes, even this critic – you could see why we are constantly attracted to going there.
