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Outside Edge announces a new script competition – the Phil Fox Award for Playwriting!

The Phil Fox Award for Playwriting

In celebration of Outside Edge Theatre Company’s 20th Anniversary, Artistic Director Matt Steinberg announced an exciting new initiative in honour of OETC’s founder: the Phil Fox Award for Playwriting.

Launching next year, this national competition will invite playwrights to submit scripts about issues related to substance misuse and addiction. The competition will open for entries from March to June 2020. The winner of the cash prize and professional development opportunities will be announced in November 2020. Scripts will be judged by a panel of high-profile industry judges including multi-award-winning playwright Enda Walsh. 

Enda Walsh’s recent plays include Arlington (Galway International Festival); an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Twits (The Royal Court); Ballyturk and Room 303, Misterman (Galway International Arts Festival); and several plays for Druid Theatre Company, including Penelope, The New Electric Ballroom, and The Walworth Farce. He collaborated with David Bowie on the musical Lazarus, and won a Tony Award for writing the book for the musical Once. His film work includes Disco Pigs and Hunger, winner of the Camera d’Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.

Enda Walsh says, “It is a great honour to be associated with Outside Edge and I’m so looking forward to reading scripts submitted for this inaugural competition. Theatre can take on so many different shapes – its aesthetic and structure is extremely amorphous. Yet at its core we use theatre to make some sort of sense of ‘us’ in this peculiar and surprising and terrifying and wonderful world. The specific world of addiction, of substance dependence is complex and challenging. To those submitting – I wish them the very best of luck with their plays. Be brave. Use the medium.” 

OETC’s Artistic Director Matt Steinberg says, “I am thrilled that Enda will chair the first Phil Fox Award judges committee. One of Enda’s earliest plays, Sucking Dublin, was explicitly about substance misuse, but all of his work aligns with OETC’s artistic mission to challenge dramatic form and shed light on hidden parts of society. His passion and commitment for nurturing talent will prove invaluable to ensure the competition’s playwrights have the most creatively rewarding experience possible. I cannot imagine a better way to celebrate the first twenty years of OETC than by inspiring the next generation of theatre artists to share more stories about substance misuse and addiction with audiences for years to come.”

More details for the inaugural Phil Fox Award for Playwriting will be announced in January 2020.

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Outside Edge Theatre Company 61 Munster Road, London, SW6 5RE | Phone: 02073718020 | E-mail: admin@edgetc.org  | Company registration No. 03871591  |  Registered Charity No. 1080948

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