39th John Whiting Award

Presentation speech

Photo: Pete Jones

"You open your eyes, and it’s dark. In the darkness, your head aches. In the darkness, your mouth is dry. You get up, and light a fag.

Outside, it’s dark. Oily rain pisses down the window in fat black veins. You put your slippers on. They’re cold. You scuff into the kitchen, feel for the kettle and the tap. A car alarm goes off in the street.

In the darkness, you have a piss. In the darkness, you brush your teeth. In the darkness, you look in the mirror.

You look in the mirror.

You look in the mirror.

And things. Are about. To explode."

There are very few moments in life which you can point to with absolute certainty and say ‘That changed my life’. Well for me, winning last year’s John Whiting Award was one of them.

Some of you may recall that my winning play HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY & NEVER BE FOUND had been turned down by almost every theatre in London. I began to fear that the title could be an ominous reference to the fate of my playwriting career.

I’d spent a year and a half of my life writing that play, and a further 6 months trying unsuccessfully to sell it. After 2 years of scrabbling around between the dole and a bit of drama teaching, I gave up. I ran out of money, not to mention hope, and knew I had to re-train. I enrolled on a PGCE teacher training course and began a placement at a 6th form college, teaching A-level Drama, badly.

One bleak January morning, I got up in the dark, with a headache. I lit a fag. Oily rain pissed down the window. And things … seemed somehow familiar. But that day was different. On the way into work, my phone rang and the dulcet tones of [award administrator] Charles Hart answered, and in that moment, I can honestly say everything changed.

I can honestly say too that I was totally unprepared. Those of you who were here last time round will remember that Neil Duffield was on before me accepting the Children’s Award. He wore a suit and made a proper speech with flash cards. I stood nearby in scuffed trainers and jeans, without a thing to say, suudenly utterly terrified. I shuffled up, mumbled something daft, and got off again as soon as I could.

So I’m really delighted to be asked back this year, and not only to make up for that shambolic performance. Because there was one set of people I forgot to thank, who I really should have. So if this years winners will forgive me – I know it’s not my night - but I would just like to try and atone for last year’s cock-up, by saying a big thank you to Half Moon Young People’s Theatre.

They were the only ones during my 2 years in the wilderness to commission one of my crazy ideas. That play, LOCKED IN, a hip hop musical for teenagers about pirate radio is currently touring, and if you’ll forgive the plug is going to be playing in this very studio at the start of November.

But the point in mentioning this is more than just free publicity. Last year was the first time an unproduced play has won this award. The national press took some interest in this fact and the Guardian asked me to do an angry young man piece about how this could possibly be allowed to happen. In the end I did a rather more measured piece where I talked to a lot of writers about the difficulties they faced in getting unusual or ambitious work commissioned.

What I concluded from this was that the fine balancing act which theatres have to make between taking risks on edgy new work and balancing the books, all too often tends to tip in favour of the books. But ironically, it is most often the smaller companies, the young people’s theatres, the regional theatres, those with the least resources to risk, who tend to commission the unusual and ambitious work and who support writers at crucial stages of their careers.

And of course, awards such as tonight’s are a vital part of that too. They can take a risk, they can support writers who are trying to break new ground. In some cases, like mine, they can single-handedly resuscitate a career. Without the John Whiting Award, I can honestly say I would not be writing plays today. HOW TO DISAPPEAR would not be opening at Sheffield Crucible next March. I would not be working on an enormous new play for the Tricycle. Instead, I’d probably have disappeared, and be teaching A-level Drama somewhere, badly.

So it is with sadness that I learned that there is a shadow hanging over the John Whiting Award. Internal restructuring within the Arts Council has meant that funding for this award is being withdrawn. Its future is uncertain. It might disappear. Tonight could in fact be its last night. If that does turn out to be the case, an unknown number of future plays and playwrights just like me, could disappear with it.

However, we are here to celebrate tonight’s worthy winners – and there are two this year. Both of them somewhat put paid to the theory I developed for the Guardian, that big theatre companies shy away from risk. Or perhaps that they broke through in spite of it is testament to their quality.

Both plays are serious, heavyweight, urgent political works. Both were commissioned by mainstream theatre companies with a national profile, with one even transferring to the West End.

One of them, an extraordinary psychological thriller, examines postcolonial Africa through the psychopathology of dictatorship – no mean feat. The other, a passionate and lyrical love story about loyalty and betrayal, manages to weave together the geopolitics of the Cold War, with an unflinching examination of love under fire.

Both in their different ways carve out new dramatic territory. And both, I hope, mark a sea change in commissioning culture and theatrical risk-taking. Long may it continue.

So without further ado, it is my great pleasure to present the 39th John Whiting Award for New Theatre Writing to Fraser Grace for BREAKFAST WITH MUGABE, and James Phillips for THE RUBENSTEIN KISS.