Colin Dowland wins Liverpool Hope Playwriting Prize 2019

A headteacher has won 2019's Liverpool Hope Playwriting Prize.

Penned by Colin Dowland, Headless is a comedy about a school's disastrous inspection by watchdog Ofsted.

Dowland, a headteacher of a London primary school, takes the £10,000 cash prize, and Headless will now be considered for a potential production at Liverpool's prestigious Royal Court Theatre.

Headless is described: "It is the most difficult day in the life of a school. An Ofsted inspection is about to begin. In the headteacher's office, there is one tiny glitch: the head is missing.

"Found drunk, unconscious and locked in the toilet, the school is effectively 'headless'. With their reputations at stake and compromising revelations of a dominatrix, an illicit affair and a wayward gap student, the staff decide that the inspection must go ahead without him."

Speaking to BCG Pro, Dowland says: "I'm totally thrilled and honoured to win the Liverpool Hope Playwriting Prize 2019. Thanks to the judging panel for thinking Headless was funny enough on the page for it to win.

"I'm now looking forward to working together with the Royal Court Liverpool in developing the play and hoping this will be a brilliant platform to develop my comedy writing in the future."

Organisers of the competition explain: "The Liverpool Hope Playwriting Prize is the second largest national play-writing competition and provides a great platform for new comedy plays and writers across the UK. To qualify for the prize, scripts must be original, unperformed and funny!"

The third annual prize was awarded in collaboration between the theatre and Liverpool Hope University. More than 200 entries were submitted from across the UK, with a shortlist going to an eight-person judging panel to choose the eventual winner.

The Prize is judged anonymously, meaning the reading and judging panels do not know the identities of the writers until a winner has been chosen.

The judges for 2019 were John Bennett (senior lecturer in contemporary theatre), Maurice Bessman (playwright), Frank Cottrell Boyce (author and screenwriter), Les Dennis (actor and comedian), Kevin Fearon (producer), John Godber OBE (playwright), Catherine Jones (journalist and reviewer), and Barbara Phillips (producer).

The other shortlisted finalists were Oliver Clark's Cutting; On The Edge Of Paradise by Mark Lee; Fun Run by Joe Graham; Emily Jupp's Doing Well; and Konigsberg (A Love Story), written by Anthony Green.

The Liverpool Hope Playwriting Prize will return in 2020. playwritingprize.com