Ali’s play FINAL RESTING PLACE has made it to the final round of the Women’s Prize for Playwriting 2023. With a submission total of over a thousand scripts, MacLean is in the top 9% of the selected playwrights.
The Women’s Prize is the first of its kind which celebrates and champions female and non-binary playwrights working in the UK. The mission is to create a movement towards redressing the gender balance of plays produced in UK theatres.
“By seeking out, championing and staging extraordinary new plays by women, we hope to redefine and revitalise the canon for future generations.”
Founder and theatre producer Ellie Keel stated: “…It is time for the theatre industry to make sure it’s putting as much faith in female writers as they have to put in themselves to get plays written.”
Founding Partners include Ellie Keel Productions (SOHO Theatre, Barbican Centre, Arcola Theatre), Paines Plough Theatre (works by Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Dennis Kelly and Mike Bartlett), Sonia Friedman Productions (Book of Mormon, Oklahoma, Leopoldstadt, The Inheritance, Jerusalem, Ink, The Piano Lessons), and The London Library.
Judges for this year’s competition include: Anya Ryan (Theatre critic, The Guardian), April de Angelis (My Brilliant Friend, Wuthering Heights), Katharine Viner (My Name Is Rachel Corrie), Mel Kenyon agent, Casarotto Ramsay), Chris Bush (TONY! The Blair Musical, Standing At The Sky’s Edge), Samira Ahmed (BBC News), Nina Steiger (Head of Play Development, National Theatre), Noma Dumezweni (Olivier award-winning actress), and Indhu Rubasingham (stage director).
FINAL RESTING PLACE is a composite of stories told by a diverse group of women who’s lives are connected by a serial killer. Some of these women are victims from beyond the grave. Some are family members, or detectives involved. Others have suffered by his hand, yet remain nameless to society while this killer has become famous. A horror movie production based on the killings, called Final Resting Place, is intertwined through out the play. Soon the audience isn’t able to tell fact from fiction, highlighting society’s obsession with violence and consumption of the deaths of women as entertainment.
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Ali MacLean 