The Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize 2026
APPLICATIONS OPEN ON 1st JANUARY 2026.
Awarded for the best playwriting response on the theme, which will be announced shortly.
The winner and runners-up will receive financial support in the following amounts:
First place: £3,000
Second place: £1,000
Third place: £1,000
Rules
There is a fee of £10 per entry.
You may submit only ONE play per entry. If you wish to submit more than one play, then you should complete multiple entries. Any entry with more than one play attached will risk disqualification.Open to all nationalities.
Applicants must be aged 18 or above at the time of entry.
All entries must be written in English.
You can enter multiple prizes.
The use of generative writing programmes or artificial intelligence (for example, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) is strictly prohibited.
Submission requirements:
A completed play that responds to the theme. The response is up to you and if you think your work is a response, then you are eligible to submit. Plays must be longer than 30 minutes (which is likely around 30-pages)
A short statement about how your work responds to the theme.
A brief summary of your past work and writing experience.
Please note: we reserve the right to change any aspect of our prizes at any point during the submission or judging process, or to not award a prize if we wish.
Judge
2026 - Judge will be announced soon.
Past Judges include:
Nick Blood - Nick is an actor who has appeared in many film, TV and theatre productions in both in the UK and US. After reading Politics at Bristol University he attended LAMDA where he studied classical acting. Upon graduating he won the Old Vic New Voices Award for his play ‘Inches Apart’ and was nominated for the spotlight prize and a finalist in the Alan Bates Award. He made his professional stage debut at the Royal Court followed by performances at the National Theatre and in the West End. His screen credits include include HBO’s EUPHORIA; Danny Boyle's BABYLON; Star Wars spin-off Andor, MISFITS (Channel 4); HIM & HER (BBC); and Marvel's AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.
Roxana Silbert - Artistic Director of Hampstead Theatre (from 2019-2022); Artistic Director of Birmingham Repertory Theatre (2012-2019); Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company; Artistic Director of Paines Plough Theatre Company (2005-2009); Literary Director at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh (2001-2004); and Associate Director of the Royal Court (1998-2000).
Clare Slater - Head of play development at the National Theatre; Artistic Director of Hightide Theatre (2022-2025); Head of New Work at Donmar Warehouse (2016-2022); Executive Director of the Gate Theatre (2012-2016); Assistant Literary Manager at the National Theatre (2009-2012).
Blanche McIntyre - Award winning theatre and opera director who has directed new plays and revivals at theatres including the Hampsstead Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, the Orange Tree Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Almeida Theatre, the Finborough Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the National Theatre.
Sophie Hunter - Sophie Hunter is an theatre director, playwright and former actress and singer. She made her directorial debut in 2007 co-directing the experimental play The Terrific Electric at the Barbican Pit after winning the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award with her theatre collective Boileroom. In addition, she has directed an Off-Off-Broadway revival of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts (2010) at Access Theatre, the performance art titled Lucretia (2011) based on Benjamin Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia at Location One's Abramovic Studio in New York City, and the Phantom Limb Company's 69° South also known as Shackleton Project (2011) which premièred at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theatre and later toured North America.
Juliet Gilkes-Romero - Juliet Gilkes Romero is an award winning writer for stage and screen. She was Writer in Residence at the National Theatre 2022/2023 attached to the New Works Department. Juliet is the recipient of the Alfred Fagon Award for Best New Play 2020, the Roland Rees Bursary 2019, named in honour of the co-founder of the Alfred Fagon Award, and the BBC World Service Alexander Onassis Research Bursary. In 2009 Gilkes-Romero won the Best Play Award at the Writers Guild of Great Britain Award for her play At the Gates of Gaza, produced at Birmingham Rep in 2008. Gilkes Romero is also a former journalist and worked for the BBC, reporting from countries including Ethiopia, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, before graduating with an M.A. in Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Previous winners
2025 - On Fear
Winner: Mo Holmes
Mo Holmes is a black queer Southern playwright and librettist, born in San Antonio and raised on the long stretch of road from Texas to Alabama. Her writing has been developed and/or presented by the Playwrights’ Center, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Sam French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, Minnesota Opera, Atlanta Opera, Vertigo Theatre, Climate Action New Play Collective, and Columbia University School of the Arts. Some of her other recognitions include the Next Wave Initiative Lorraine Hansberry Award (winner); and the Jane Chambers Prize (finalist). As a dramaturg and teaching artist, she has supported new play development at Good Apples Collective, the Playwrights’ Center, Guthrie Theater, Jungle Theater, Horizon Theatre Company and Columbia. She is an MFA Candidate in Playwriting and Undergraduate Writing Program Teaching Fellow at Columbia.
Runner up: Rachel Causer
Rachel Causer trained as an actor at Mountview, before honing her writing with The Arcola and The Criterion New Writing & Development groups. Her plays include: Lippy (Fringe Tour – Finalist Best Newcomer at Brighton Fringe), When It Happens (Tristan Bates – Offie Finalist) and Please, Feel Free to Share (Theatre503 & The Pleasance Courtyard), which was an Offie and Popcorn Award Finalist and is published by Methuen Drama.
Rachel trained in screenwriting on the Channel 4Screenwriting Scheme 2023 and is one of eight writers on the Dancing Ledge/ScreenSkills Scheme 2025. She studied filmmaking at Met Film, where she wrote and directed her debut short Stalemate, and is now developing projects across TV, film and radio.
She is also the founder of Scatterjam, creating female-led work that is socially and politically engaged while being structurally bold and always unashamedly entertaining.
Runner up: Eliana Ostro
Eliana is a writer, director and script editor working across theatre, TV and film. Her play Anything With a Pulse sold out at the Edinburgh Fringe before transferring to London’s Park Theatre for two further sell-out runs. It was described as “a witty, hang-on-to-your-hormones tour of modern dating” ★★★★ The Times, and “punchy and warm. As endearing as any Richard Curtis rom-com” ★★★★ The Stage. Eliana has adapted the play into her debut novel (of the same name), due for release as an Audible Original next summer and in print the following year. Alongside her own writing, she works as a Development Editor at Origin Pictures and is currently script editing Yomi Adegoke’s TV adaptation of The List.
2024 - On Language
Winner: Lucy Singer
Lucy is a writer and student from Manchester. In between her Modern Languages and Cultures studies at the University of Sheffield, she has written multiple short and full-length plays that have been performed across the UK. Her short play ‘My Work Friend’s Boyfriend‘ made the final of OFFCUT at 53Two Theatre in Manchester and has also been performed in Sheffield and London. She is looking forward to developing her writing career as much as possible both during and post university.
Runner up: Sadie Pearson
Sadie Pearson is a writer, director, theatre maker and co-founder of Full Frontal Theatre Ltd. Her playwrighting debut 'To Watch a Man Eat' has earned critical acclaim and a plethora of five-star-spangled reviews across the UK, performing in Bristol, the Edinburgh Fringe, Shakespeare North Playhouse and The Old Red Lion, London.
Her latest play 'Rodney Black, Who Cares? It's Working' will be performed in London December 2024.
Runner up: Eloise Pennycott
Eloise is a writer, actor, and fight director. She made her writing debut at the National Theatre, with award winning play Barrier(s). Since then, she has continued to make work championing deaf and queer perspectives, working with Deafinitely Theatre, HighTide, CRIPtic Arts. As an actor, Eloise is best known for playing Daisy in BBC’s Phoenix Rise. Other credits include Lord of the Flies (Leeds Playhouse) and The Power (Prime Video). Fight directing credits include Galatea (Brighton Festival) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (NYMT).
2023 - On Flourishing
Winner: Fintan Dineen
Fintan is an Irish playwright and poet from South London. His first play ‘One Above’ ran for a full run at the Edinburgh Fringe 15’. His next play ‘SEND’ won the Young Harts Festival 16’ at the Lyric Hammersmith. He was then commissioned to write ‘Passin’ Thru’ for the Lyric Hammersmith’s Evolution Festival 17’. He joined Soho Theatre Writers Lab in 2017 where he developed his play ‘drift’, subsequently shortlisted for BBC Drama Writersroom 2021. In 2019, he wrote ‘Fresh One’ for Immediate Theatre and started working on ‘Shoulders’, also shortlisted for BBC Drama Writersroom 2022. His play ‘Pineapple’ was produced for Ink Festival 2023. He is currently writing and performing poetry, as well as continuing to develop ‘Shoulders’.
Runner-up: Amy Lever
Amy is an award-winning writer, actor and theatre-maker from Manchester. She is passionate about creating work around coming-of-age, human connection and the contemporary British (specifically northern!) Jewish voice. Whilst studying Psychology at Cambridge University she wrote her first play, Life Before the Line, which won the Cambridge University Edinburgh Fringe Fund - a prize in which one piece of new writing is fully funded at the Edinburgh Fringe where it received five star reviews and sold-out shows. She has since been named Runner-up for the Alpine Fellowship Prize For Playwriting, shortlisted for the Shelagh Delaney New Writing Prize and accepted into the National Youth Theatre. Her acting credits include: “The Last Cowboy in Salford” (BFI), The Calligrapher (Edinburgh Fringe Festival) and “111 More Time” (HOME, Contact, MIF).
Runner-up: Kate Roche
Kate Roche is a playwright from London. Her first play, A Make Believe Summer, was performed at the Tower Theatre in 2022
2022 - On Freedom
Winner: Carla Grauls
Carla Grauls is an award-winning writer who has written work for theatre and audio. She was selected for Torino Film Lab's Serieslab-Talents programme in Italy and the Oxford Playhouse Writers Attachment Programme 2021/22. Her play Me Myself I was performed at the Vaults festival, and she was commissioned for Audible's Emerging Playwrights Fund to write a new full-length audio play: Life Ever After. She has won the Nick Darke Award and was shortlisted for awards and competitions including the Arch 468 Hope Prize 2021 and the Yale Drama Series Prize.
Runner-up: SEVAN
SEVAN (he/him) is a playwright-actor. His work has been seen in London and New York at The Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, The Flea Theatre, The Sheen Center, The Bush Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Theatre503, Rich Mix, The Old Red Lion, The Space, and Access Theatre. Member of the Bush Theatre inaugural 2015 Emerging Writers Group; The Public Theater 2011 Emerging Writers Group; NYTW Usual Suspect; Rising Circle Theatre Collective 2010 InkTANK Writer's Lab.
Runner-up: Mallory Weiss
Mallory Jane Weiss is a queer, woman playwright, whose work centers around female friendship, time, and finding the mythical inside the mundane. Select plays include Big Black Sunhats (Great Plains Theatre Conference 2023; The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference 2022; Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission finalist 2020), Anaphora (The O’Neill NPC finalist 2024; Premiere Play Festival semi-finalist 2024), LIGHTS OUT AND AWAY WE GO (The O’Neill NPC finalist 2023; Clubbed Thumb reading 2022), The Page Turners (Clauder Competition Gold Prize 2023; Princess Grace Award semi-finalist 2022; The O’Neill NPC finalist 2021), Pony Up (Broadway Play Publishing 2023; Princess Grace Award Finalist 2019), Dave and Julia are stuck in a tree (Playing on Air’s James Stevenson Prize 2020), and DRAWBRIDGE (Concord Theatricals 2024; Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival 2023).
2021 - Untamed: On Civilisation and Wilderness
Winner: Isla Cowan
Isla Cowan is a playwright, performer, and director, from Edinburgh. Isla specialises in making ecofeminist theatre, and is committed to exploring issues of class, gender, and ecology in her work. Isla was winner of the 2022 Assembly ART Award and the 2021 Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize for her acclaimed monologue play She Wolf, and nominated for the 2022 Filipa Bragança Award for best female solo performance. Isla’s plays have also been recently shortlisted for the St Andrews Playwriting Award and the Phil Fox Award. Playwriting credits include, To the Bone (Pitlochry Festival Theatre), She Wolf (Assembly Roxy), Progress Review (Stellar Quines, Traverse Theatre), Alright Sunshine (A Play, A Pie and A Pint, Òran Mór), And… And… And… (Strange Town Touring Company, Traverse Theatre), Jack and the Beanstalk (Hopscotch Theatre Company), Daphne, or Hellfire (Pleasance), and Sno Wite and the Seven Dickensians (Strange Town, Scottish Storytelling Centre), amongst others.
Runner-up: Monique Giroux
Monique Giroux graduated from NYU with a Bachelor of Arts and Science and from
McGill University (Montreal) with a MBA. She founded The Armadillo Theatre Company
in Toronto, Ontario to produce new American and Canadian playwrights. She worked as
associate producer at Les Productions La Fete on the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Memoirs, a
six-episode english and french documentary on the late Prime Minister of Canada which
aired on the CBC/Radio-Canada. As an entrepreneur, Monique founded MediGuide, a
medical second opinion service for insurance companies and Bonbids, an online
fundraising platform. Both companies were successfully sold to venture capitalists.
Monique has written a one-act play: A Bitter Pill which received a Zoom reading by The
Quarantine Series Theatre Company.
Runner-up: Andrew Thompson
Andrew Thompson’s play In Event Of Moone Disaster won the Theatre503 International Playwright’s Award and The Stage Debut Award - Best Writer. His work has been staged and developed in London, Edinburgh and New York amongst others. Most recently his digital play I ❤🍦was hosted by the Traverse Theatre. He has been the recipient of an Arvon/Jerwood Fellowship, an Arthur P. Sloan Foundation grant in conjunction with Manhattan Theatre Club, and carried out a Scottish Playwrights’ Residency in Japan supported by the Traverse Theatre and British Council. He is currently attached to the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh as part of their L20 scheme and is shortlisted for the Arch468 Theatre Hope Playwriting prize 2021. Andrew has recently been appointed Lecturer in Creative Writing at Newcastle University.
2020 - On Forgiveness and Retribution
Winner: Sue Bevan
After a long career teaching and lecturing Economics & Politics, Sue quit to write and perform. Her solo show An Audience With Shurl received 4* reviews at Edinburgh, was nominated for the Outstanding Performance Award at Prague Fringe and was awarded Best of Fringe in San Francisco. Mum’s The Word won the Drama Association of Wales International One Act Play Competition, and her poetry and prose appears in Dwell Time on the Penistone Railway Line. She's currently working on a play about the women's criminal in/justice system. Having recently completed her artist residency on the Isle of Wight, Sue is now a workshop leader and impoverished writer-performer looking for an agent.
Runner-up: Tabitha Mortiboy
Tabitha’s first play Billy Through the Window premiered at The Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol and transferred to the Edinburgh Fringe, where it was shortlisted for the Brighton Fringe Excellence Award. Her second play Beacons was produced at The Park Theatre, London, where it was nominated for three Off West End Awards including Best New Play and Most Promising New Playwright. Her recent play The Amber Trap premiered with Damsel Productions at Theatre503 in 2019 and this year her script Daffy Grod and the Shaking Lights was shortlisted for the Papatango Prize and longlisted for the Bruntwood Award. She is currently developing an original television series with Mam Tor Productions.
Runner-up: Phoebe Taylor
Phoebe Anne Taylor is an actor, writer and photographer based in Melbourne, Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree with Honours in Creative Writing (University of Melbourne) and Theatre Performance (Monash University), and was a member of the inaugural Howard Fine Acting Studio Australia Full Time Ensemble in 2012. In 2019, she became an alumni of the Arteles Creative Centre, having been welcomed into the Silence Awareness Existence residency programme. As a writer, her work has been selected by Baggage Productions for their Madwomen Monologues seasons, and her debut work the art of f**king was performed at La Mama Theatre, Melbourne, and became a cult success.
2019 - Identity
Winner: Lucy Foster
Lucy is a Writer & Director based in London. She loves stories centred around women in fun and interesting genres, particularly horror. Lucy took part in the Royal Court's Introduction to Playwriting Scheme (2014) Hampstead Theatre's Inspire Programme (2020) and is a graduate of the Creative Writing programme at Warwick University. As a member of Stonewall Youth, she produced a short film on homophobic bullying, which placed third in a Stonewall Anti-Homophobia Conference and was shown at the BFI in 2008/09. She’s been shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award and Theatre503 International Playwriting Prize and was longlisted for the Bruntwood Prize. In 2020 Lucy became a finalist for Flickers of the Future, a filmmaking competition run by Global Action Plan. She was also selected for the Frightfest 2023 New Blood Class for her feminist horror feature, HEADLESS CHICKS.
Runner-up: Zoë Bullock
Zoë is an award-winning writer, filmmaker & actor from Sheffield, based in Glasgow. Her plays have toured Scotland and performed in venues such as the Traverse Theatre, Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree, Eden Arts, Assembly Roxy, the Byre Theatre, and the Mareel Arts Centre in Shetland. Her work is genre-led, tragi-comic and thematically wide-ranging, though she’s particularly interested in exploring the intersection between climate crisis, class warfare, and human survival. Zoë was raised on Miyazaki, Star Wars and Ursula Le Guin, and she still gets most excited about a great genre story with characters you love… along with a monster or two.
2018 - Childhood
Winner: Kieran Lynn
Second Place: Josephine Sartre
Third Place: Toby Parker Rees
2017 - Landscape
Winner: Phil Ormerod