The Verity Bargate Award from Soho Theatre

The Verity Bargate Award is Soho Theatre’s flagship new writing award and one of the UK and Irelands's most prestigious awards for playwriting. It was established in 1981-82 and runs every two years.

The award is open to everyone: first-time writers, late starters, people who’ve been sitting on an idea for years, with no concern for the writer's background or credentials. The only criteria is great plays. 

The winner receives £12,000 and a full production at Soho Theatre. Alongside the winner of the Award, another writer receives the Character 7 Commission. This writer, selected by the award's sponsor Character 7 in consultation with Soho Theatre, is commissioned by Soho Theatre and joins the 2027 cohort of writers on the Soho ReDraft scheme.

As the 2026 winners are announced, we caught up with Max Elton to find out more about the Verity Bargate Award, its history, ethos, aims and successes and some of the challenges and rewards involved in running such a popular opportunity for writers.

Why does Soho Theatre run the Verity Bargate Award and what's the benefit of the award — for the theatre and for writers? 

First and foremost, we run the Award to find brilliant plays and exciting writers from across the UK. It underpins the decisions we make about the writers we plan to work with in the future. 

It is a snapshot of the moment in time when we are open for submissions. It tells us what people are thinking and what they are feeling. It gives us a sense of the cultural moment. 

Aside from the winner, who is guaranteed a production, we might commission a writer for our Redraft scheme, the idea for which was born out of our desire to commission more pre-existing drafts read during the Award. 

A play might arrive too rough even for the longlist, yet show enough promise that we can see a development path for it that could one day lead to it being programmed. It's a brilliant way to put oneself on Soho's radar. 

For a six-month period every two years, our literary department can expand. Writers' work gets read and considered for all the routes available at Soho, including Redraft, residencies, R&D, our Studio Writers Group or simply a coffee. 

We try to squeeze as much out of the Verity Bargate sponge as possible!

How long has has the Award been running, and how has it evolved? 

The Verity Bargate Award is the longest-running playwriting prize of its type. It was established in 1981 in memory of Verity Bargate, the founder of Soho Poly, the precursor to Soho Theatre. 

I can't speak with much certainty about what form it originally took, but over the last fifteen years it has received dramatically more submissions. 

Roughly how many submissions do you receive, and where from? 

We received 2,200 this time, which was a record. 

In 2024 it was 1,750; in 2022, around 1,500. 

Submissions come from all over the country. We run nationwide workshops, and our team travels to theatres across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland to ensure that we are connecting and engaging with writers from outside of our home in London, and encouraging people from all over the country to submit. 

We want to ensure no writer feels the Award isn't for them and that Soho does not become a byword for London.

What's the reading process, and how challenging is it to manage?

No reading process is perfect. 

Each year, however, we try to tweak our methods to ensure the next reading process will be our best to date. 

The reading process has five rounds. Round one, we read a short extract; in rounds two and three, a longer one; then in round four a reader will read the full script, before it is read by two readers at round five. 

Then the Soho team considers a longlist of 20 to 25 plays, and a shortlist of six goes to a judging panel we appoint. 

It's an extremely challenging but rewarding experience to be part of. 

Soho's Creative Associate, Pooja Sivaraman, and I have just spent half a year immersed in the collective genius (and madness) of a nation! 

We work hard to get to know our readers and their instincts and there are checks and balances built into the process, so that plays which receive a "no" in the early rounds of reading will often get a second look from someone else. 

We don't want to risk missing something special! 

It is like becoming addicted to a video game for months. You are simultaneously trying to get to grips with every contour of the world without letting it impact too severely upon your real life. 

What are the major costs of an Award like this one? 

The main financial cost for the Award is the readers, as it should be. They are the bedrock of any prize, and none of this would be possible without them.

Do you read every script in full? Do you give feedback? 

As outlined above, we cannot read every play in its entirety. 

Through our nationwide workshops, we try to be very clear about how important the first fifteen pages of any play are: for this Award, for others, and for the benefit of anyone who ever reads it. 

In TV, writers are told to "get in late, get out early", which might be a bit reductive. The opposite, however, is never a good idea. 

Everyone on the longlist is invited to meet our team. We'll provide verbal feedback, offer ways forward and make introductions to people who might be best placed to champion them. 

Beyond this, we look to create as many meaningful and sustainable relationships with writers as possible. 

What makes a script cut through? What are the common mistakes? 

What cuts through with me, is when your eyes bounce off the dialogue. There's a rhythmic quality some writers have, and you know it when you come across it. It's exhilarating and indescribable. 

Freidrich Schiller said something like: "Be of your era, but do not be its creature; give people what they need, not what they'll praise." I understand that as: "Don't chase the zeitgeist; work out what you can say to the moment. Steal but don't copy. Try hard to capture something original that people don't yet know they're going to love." 

This is easier said than done, but we’re not looking for "The Next Fleabag" because Fleabag already exists. 

Comedians apparently 'shave letters' and 'count syllables' to make sure jokes are as funny as possible. The best plays feel like they've been through a similar wringer, whether they're trying to make you laugh or not. 

Do you see people progress year to year? Do you track promising writers? 

Yes, absolutely. 

A writer reaches round three one year and round five the next; longlist one cycle, shortlist the following. 

Past winners have often submitted in earlier years. 

The Award is how we keep an eye on who's learning and moving in a direction that means we need to pay attention. 

What makes a script particularly suited to theatre, as opposed to TV or film? 

Anthony Neilson once said that the "one thing theatre has over the other mediums is its ability to create audacious, gasp-inducing moments". 

Writers who buy into this idea about the art form are the ones who are, generally, the most exciting. 

What's the role of the judges? 

Judges receive the six shortlisted scripts and have just over a month to read them.

We then meet in person to discuss their findings.  

We look for a mix: people who know Soho well, people who don't, people outside the theatre bubble. 

Their role is to work together to hone their ideas and decide which shortlisted script will win the award. 

There was a good moment during this year's judges' meeting. One judge was championing a play, and another said, "The way you've talked about that play has shown me how someone would direct it." 

It was fascinating to see wisdom being pooled in this way.

Can you tell us about ongoing successes from previous winners? 

Sam Grabiner's Boys on the Verge of Tears won the Award and then the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. He's since had a brilliant production of Christmas Day at the Almeida. Soho is delighted to have played such a key role at the start of his career as a playwright. 

Other winners have included Matt Charman, who received an Academy Award nomination for Bridge of Spies, and Vicky Jones, who subsequently directed Fleabag and has written and created Run for HBO. 

Beyond these successes, there are also the writers who didn't win and have, nevertheless, gone on to brilliant things. 

Last time, the runner-up was Driftwood by Martina Laird, which played the Royal Shakespeare Company in association with the Kiln. Rhianna Adesuwa Ilube, shortlisted in 2022 for Samuel Takes a Break, had her play produced at the Yard Theatre. Porn Play by Sophia Chetin-Leuner ran at the Royal Court after being shortlisted. And Girls by Theresa Ikoko, a Verity Bargate finalist, premiered in a Soho co-production and is now being revived at the Young Vic. 

These plays, and many more which have had similar trajectories, demonstrate the impact the Award can have upon the wider theatre ecosystem. 

What are the big challenges in keeping the Award going? 

Fewer commissioning opportunities mean more plays are being written by writers who have not been paid to do so. This means our submissions number keeps growing. 

When we announce a record haul, there are two interpretations, both of which have some truth in them. More people are writing plays, which is exciting. And those writers are hitting dead ends increasingly often, which isn't. 

The challenge is this: as prize swells in size, our job becomes more important to the wider landscape, but vaster and therefore harder.

Why are competitions like this valuable for the wider industry — and how do they feed into television, for example? 

The Award has been sponsored for well over a decade by the TV production company Character 7 and its founder, Stephen Garrett, the producer behind shows like SPOOKS and THE NIGHT MANAGER, as well as movies including EASTERN PROMISES and SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN. We are lucky to have both his extraordinary support and his invaluable insight. 

He does it on the understanding that people working in television should give back to theatre, where so many brilliant TV writers started.  

Jack Thorne had one of his first plays at Soho; James Graham has had work produced here too. People like Stephen recognise the importance of pouring fertiliser over the soil of theatre's allotment. Long may that continue. 

When the longlist is released, it isn't only theatres who contact us asking to read the plays or meet the writers. The Award is an invaluable resource across the wider industry.  

Being longlisted helps writers attract agents, which in turn leads to their work being put in front of TV producers. 

We're delighted to be part of their beginning, on the explicit understanding that they save their best ideas just for theatre and hopefully Soho!