John Whiting Award

Between 1965 and 2010, the John Whiting Award (from 2007 renamed the Peter Wolff Trust Supports the John Whiting Award) was awarded annually to a British or Commonwealth playwright who, in the opinion of a consortium of UK theatres, showed a new and distinctive development in dramatic writing with particular relevance to contemporary society. The award was established in 1965 to commemorate John Whiting and his distinctive contribution to post-war British theatre.[1] Until 2006, the selection was made by the drama panel of Arts Council England, and the play did not need to have been staged, which allowed plays produced on radio to be considered.

From 2007, only plays which had been performed in the subsidised sector were eligible. The award was initially worth £1000, but grew to £6000 per year. From 2007, the award was supplied by the Peter Wolff Theatre Trust and was administered by a consortium of UK theatres which specialise in new writing.

The theatres involved were:

Winners of the John Whiting Award
Year Playwright Play
1967 Tom Stoppard Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Wole Soyinka The Interpreters
1967 Peter Nichols A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
1968 Peter Barnes The Ruling Class
Edward Bond Narrow Road to the Deep North
1969 Howard Brenton Christie in Love
1970 Freehold Company and Peter Hulton (joint) Freehold on Antigone
1971 Mustapha Matura As Time Goes By
1972 Heathcote Williams AC/DC
1973 John Arden
1974 David Rudkin
1975
1976 David Edgar Destiny
1977 David Lan The Winter Dancers
1978 David Halliwell Prejudice[2][3]
Snoo Wilson The Glad Hand
1979 Stephen Bill The Old Order
1980 Vince Foxall Gestures
1981 David Pownall Beef
1982 Karim Alrawi Migrations
1983 Peter Flannery Our Friends in the North
1984 Ron Hutchinson The Rat in the Skull
1985 Guy Hibbert On the Edge
Heidi Thomas Shamrocks & Crocodiles
1986 Nick Dear The Art of Success
1987
1988 Iain Heggie American Bagpipes
1989 Billy Roche A Handful of Stars
1990
Lucy Gannon Keeping Tom Nice
1991 Terry Johnson Imagine Drowning
1992 Rod Wooden Your Home in the West
1993 Martin Crimp The Treatment
Helen Edmundson The Clearing
1994 Jonathan Harvey Beautiful Thing
1995 Joe Penhall Some Voices
1996 Ayub Khan-Din East is East
1997 Ann Coburn Get Up and Tie Your Fingers
1998/9 Roy Williams Starstruck
1999
2000 David Greig The Cosmonaut's Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union
Tanika Gupta The Waiting Room
2001 Zinnie Harris Further than the Furthest Thing
2002 Peter Rumney Jumping on my Shadow
2003 Rona Munro Iron
2004 Owen McCafferty Scenes from the Big Picture
2005 Fin Kennedy How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found
2006 James Phillips The Rubenstein Kiss
Fraser Grace Breakfast with Mugabe
2007 Dennis Kelly Taking Care of Baby
2008 Bryony Lavery Stockholm
2009 Alexi Kaye Campbell The Pride
2010 Tim Crouch The Author
Lucy Kirkwood it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now
  1. ^ "John Whiting Drama Award". The Glasgow Herald. 19 January 1965. Retrieved 12 August 2024.
  2. ^ "Play Prizes". Birmingham Daily Post. 8 December 1978.
  3. ^ McCall, Anthony (29 December 1978). "Major Arts Lobby Launched". The Stage.