Dorothy Berwin, Mark Lee, Tom Kirdahy Announce Winners of First Berwin Lee Playwrights Award

Dorothy Berwin, Mark Lee and Tom Kirdahy are pleased to announce the inaugural winners of the first annual Berwin Lee Playwrights Award. The Berwin Lee Award was created to foster and promote the craft of playwriting in both the United States and the United Kingdom and to encourage the writing and production of plays.

Berwin Lee will grant awards to playwrights whose work has not yet been produced on Broadway or in the West End. Potential recipients will be identified through recommendations from chosen theatre companies in New York, NY and London, UK and recommendations from Berwin Lee's advisory board which includes Maria Arena Bell, Sandra Brant, Dominic Cooke, Gary Garrison, Joyce Hytner, Cherry Jones, Mel Kenyon, Donna Murphy and John Tiffany.

This year's winners are Bathsheba Doran (US recipient) and Lucy Kirkwood (UK recipient). They each will each receive a $25,000 award. Both Doran and Kirkwood were chosen unanimously by the three trustees of the award based in part on recommendations from the Artistic Directors of Lincoln Center Theatre in New York and The Royal Court Theatre in London. Each recipient will receive the award in the form of a commission, with no specific time frame attached so that they have the freedom to write the plays they want to write without restriction.

A reception will be held in their honor in New York City on April 30, 2013. The award will be celebrated in London in Fall 2013.

In a shared statement, Berwin, Lee and Kirdahy said: "We have always been passionate and active theatergoers for as long as we can remember. We wanted to give back to the theatre community and since everything starts with the writer, we felt we could be most effective by awarding grants to talented playwrights to help foster and develop new plays. Since we believe that London and New York are the theatre capitals of the world, we decided to create an award that celebrates playwrights on both sides of the Atlantic."