VERITY BARGATE AWARD 2024 WINNER ANNOUNCED

THE VERITY BARGATE AWARD 2024 WINNER ANNOUNCED

EOIN McANDREW: LITTLE BROTHER – AWARD WINNER 2024
MARTINA LAIRD: DRIFTWOOD – RUNNER UP 2024

at a celebration event held to celebrate 42nd year of the new writing award

Soho Theatre announces the Award winner for its prestigious new writing competition, the Verity Bargate Award, sponsored by Character 7, at an event celebrating the five shortlisted playwrights from a record number of 1700 submissions, 20 longlisted and five shortlisted plays. Eoin McAndrew’s Little Brother has been selected as the Award winner, and Martina Laird’s Driftwood as runner-up.

The Verity Bargate Award shortlisted playwrights (L-R) Eleanor Tindall, Martha Watson Allpress, Samantha Miles, Eoin McAndrew (Award winner), Martina Laird (Award runner-up) alongside playwright and Verity Bargate Award 2024 judge Moira Buffini

The Verity Bargate Award is Soho Theatre’s biennial playwrighting award open to new writers living in the UK and Ireland, who have had fewer than three professional productions, and looking for plays alive to the world, in touch with Soho Theatre’s audience, and have an audacity to make people gasp. Submissions opened on Thursday 11 April to coincide with the Soho Theatre opening of the critically acclaimed production of the 2022 Verity Bargate Award-winning play, Boys On The Verge Of Tears by Sam Grabiner, directed by James Macdonald.

The judging panel, chaired by  Stephen Garrett of award-winning independent production company Character 7  (Culprits, The Undoing, The Night Manager) included multi award-winning screen and stage actor and Artistic Director of Pitlochry Festival  Alan Cumming,  director Anthony Lau (former Associate Artistic Director, Sheffield Theatres), playwright Anupama Chandrasekhar (The Father and the Assassin at National Theatre) , Olivier Award-winning playwright  Moira Buffini (Handbagged at Kiln / West End; Dinner at National Theatre / West End), award-winning musician and actor Rebecca Lucy Taylor AKA Self Esteem (Cabaret at Kit Kat Club) and writer, director and Nouveau Riche artistic director Ryan Calais Cameron (For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy at Royal Court Theatre / West End; Typical at Soho Theatre).

Judges on the Verity Bargate Award-winning play Little Brother by Eoin McAndrew:

Chair Stephen Garrett from Character 7 said: ‘In the few years that we have been sponsoring the Verity Bargate Award, the bar for great and inspiring writing from emerging voices just gets higher and higher. This year’s shortlist was of an extraordinarily high-quality and in truth any of the five plays would have been deserving winners. Little Brother is very beautiful, true, immensely moving, oh-so personal, and somehow universal, too. I can’t wait to see the play on the stage’

Alan Cumming: ‘Little Brother deals with huge subjects like addiction and self-harming and visceral familial connections and hovering above it all like a menacing historical umbrella is Northern Ireland. Like its location, this play knows troubles but manages to remind us that love will win.’

Anupama Chandrasekhar: ‘Little Brother is a masterfully crafted, heart-wrenching play on depression written with extraordinary tenderness, restraint and courage. This rare gem of a play made me smile and cry and perhaps see the world a tad differently.’

Anthony Lau: ‘Little Brother is an extraordinary play full of humour and pathos, I found the characters and their journey hugely moving. Eoin has written a beautifully crafted play that manages to be both small and delicate, and also mammoth in theme and feeling. The dance between words said and unsaid by characters stayed with me long after I finished reading, as did the weight of what they had gone through. Eoin has a clear and distinct voice, writing about all of us in the small family unit they present onstage. A terrific winner.’ 

Moira Buffini: ‘This beautifully crafted and immensely humane play tackles the difficult subject of mental illness in a post-conflict society. It does so with great theatricality, humour and compassion. It stayed with me long after I had finished reading.’

Max Elton, Associate Director (Literary) at Soho Theatre said:  ‘Over the last four months, alongside a fantastic team of dedicated readers, Soho Theatre has had the pleasure of considering scripts from some of the UK and Ireland’s most promising emerging playwrights. Eoin McAndrew’s Little Brother truly stood out as a remarkable play that renders the universal in the particular, tackling big knotty themes with insight and humour. McAndrew is an exciting new voice in British theatre and a thoroughly deserving winner of this year’s award.’

As Verity Bargate Award winner, Eoin McAndrew receives:

• £8,000 for an exclusive option for Soho Theatre to produce the prize-winning play
• A full London run of the play staged at Soho Theatre
• And for the first time in the history of the Verity Bargate Award, Soho Theatre partners with leading new-writing venues in India and USA to hold workshops and readings of the prize-winning play. This is a career-defining opportunity for the winning playwright to build new relationships outside the UK and for their play to receive international exposure. It builds on Soho Theatre’s mission to develop sustained cultural exchange with global partners in India and USA, increasing opportunities for international artistic collaboration.

Speaking after the celebration event, Eoin McAndrew said: ‘Competitions like Verity Bargate Award are good as they give you a deadline and structure and routes into the industry that people recognise and want to see. I like the work Soho Theatre does and I felt like [Little Brother] might be a play that finds an audience there’.

Judges on the Verity Bargate Award Runner Up play Driftwood by Martina Laird:

Anupama Chandrasekhar: ‘Driftwood is a bold and blistering exploration of colonialism and capitalism— it’s funny, provocative and simply impossible to forget.’

Anthony Lau: ‘I thought Driftwood was brilliant in its world building. Martina has created a family of characters in a detailed and specific time and location, so vivid that you can smell the heat and taste the sweat. It is a play that examines a period of history, too often neglected, where capitalism and colonialism collide – and Martina manages to do it in a way that is rich, human and full of vigour. Full of twists and turns, Driftwood is a play that captures the imagination and uncovers the past.’

Moira Buffini: ‘The nuanced characterisation, finely crafted language and atmospheric setting contribute to a powerful family drama. Driftwood is a big resonant play that would sit well on any stage.’ 

Also speaking after the celebration event, Martina Laird said: ‘Soho Theatre is right in the exciting part of London, it is an exciting theatre, the Verity Bargate Award stands for so much excellence, and the panel is phenomenal. The idea that those people read my play that I’ve been hiding away from the world [for almost 20 years] is astonishing. There’s no wilder, happier feeling.’

VERITY BARGATE AWARD 2024, SPONSORED BY CHARACTER 7.

VERITY BARGATE AWARD WINNER 2024:

LITTLE BROTHER 
by Eoin McAndrew   

“I would really like you to do something for me.

I’d like you to promise me that you’re not going to try and set yourself on fire again.”

Brigid’s brother Niall calls her unexpectedly in the middle of the night. To get his life back on track, Niall moves back in with Brigid, turning her world upside down. Little Brother is a compelling and powerful exploration of a sibling relationship set in modern-day Belfast.

Eoin McAndrew’s nuanced, beautifully observed and darkly comic new play shines a light on the crisis of care in the UK, examining the strength of a brother-sister bond and the unpredictable journey towards recovery.

Sometimes the only thing you can do is be there for the people you love.

VERITY BARGATE AWARD RUNNER UP 2024:

DRIFTWOOD
By Martina Laird

Diamond is on the run from his life in post-war Trinidad. In the pursuit of the mother who abandoned him, he finds himself trapped between desire and political entanglement. The turns in his small-time con act echo the developments in the nation’s colonial legacy. His own challenges for self-determination are set against the British colony’s struggle to free itself from Empire and move towards Independence.

VERITY BARGATE AWARD SHORTLIST 2024:

• Eleanor Tindall, WHAT IF ORPHEUS WAS FOUR SAD WOMEN
• Eoin McAndrew, Little Brother
• Martha Watson Allpress, Stuff
• Martina Laird, Driftwood
• Samantha Miles, Dragonslayer

VERITY BARGATE AWARD LONGLIST 2024:

• Abbi Greenland, Talking to Boys
• Billie Collins, The Walrus Has a Right to Adventure
• Dina Nayeri, Idyll
• Eleanor Tindall, WHAT IF ORPHEUS WAS FOUR SAD WOMEN
• Eoin McAndrew, Little Brother
• Héloïse Thual, God Is A Giant Pickle
• Isla van Tricht, Mamet is Dead
• John-Luke Roberts, Pat!
• Joseph Charlton, Anniversary
• Joy Nesbitt, Good
• Martha Watson Allpress, Stuff
• Martina Laird, Driftwood
• Nana-Kofi Kufuor, Olive Morris Never Dies
• Natasha Collie, Eleven at Night Somewhere Without You
• Nick Dawkins, Marilyn
• Noga Flaishon, Mamoriam
• Rhys Warrington, Monument
• Samantha Miles, Dragonslayer
• Sid Sagar, John From Hemel
• Tamsin Rees, Stupid Girls