Cardiff’s pub theatre The Other Room is calling for submission for a new Violet Burns Playwright Award, which aims to help discover and develop Welsh and Wales-based female playwrights.
The Award will run annually for the next three years, and the winner will have the opportunity to have their first play professionally produced at The Other Room. In this, its inaugural year, the Award is looking for writers specifically interested in writing in the Welsh language.
The Award has been made through the generous support of Violet’s daughter Hayley who has created it in memory of her mother. Violet Burns was born into a working-class family in 1946. Raised in a two bedroom council house in a small fishing village on the east coast of Scotland, there were insufficient finances available to support the family and she had to leave school early to take up a job in the local Spar. Given her background and the limited opportunities she had been given, she never believed herself capable nor creative, and yet was a secret writer and poet. She never returned to her education despite having a keen interest in both medicine and writing. Violet sadly passed away on 10th January 2017 following a battle with lung cancer. Today, the day the Award is announced, would have been Violet’s birthday. Hayley, Violet’s daughter, said,“Mum never felt that she reached her potential. Her early experiences meant she didn’t embrace opportunities later in life and this is a great sadness to us, her remaining family. She was hugely supportive of her children (two daughters and a son) and she always taught us to believe we were capable of whatever we wanted to do, especially us girls. I wanted to create this award in memory of a woman who never knew how incredibly talented she was. And it makes complete sense that it is The Other Room that offers this Award – as a Board member, I’ve seen first hand how artist support is at the heart of what the organisation does. I know that Mum would be proud that it was helping other young women to reach their full creative potential.”
Dan Jones, Artistic Director of The Other Room, said, “I’m so thrilled and honoured to be announcing the Violet Burns Playwright Award today. Created in memory of Violet Burns by her family, the Award will enable us to discover new and distinct female voices in Wales, offering the opportunities that Violet herself was not afforded – support, development, growth and a platform from which to be heard. Under-representation of women writers in theatre is a growing concern across the UK. It’s time to buck the trend.”
Applications for the 2018 award are now open. For more information on how to apply, please visit www.otherroomtheatre.com. To keep updated on The Other Room, you can also follow the team on Twitter @TORtheatre and Facebook www.facebook.com/otherroomtheatre
Image: Tess Seymour
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