The RTST is introducing a new award scheme for emerging directors: the RTST Director Award Scheme.
The Scheme will provide an opportunity for an emerging director to create and direct a fully-funded, full-scale production of a play by an internationally renowned dramatist as part of a main season of productions at a regional theatre.
The Scheme will involve collaboration between the RTST and a regional theatre selected by the RTST.
The RTST will make a significant grant to the participating regional theatre to be applied towards the costs of the Award winner’s production. It will be a condition of the grant that the regional theatre must facilitate the Scheme and that production.
The RTST Director Award winner will emerge from a competitive process among candidates, each of whom must have a track record as an assistant and/or associate director, or as a sole or lead director, of professional theatre productions (subject to satisfying certain other qualifying criteria), and be a UK resident.
Each candidate will be required to submit, in writing, ideas for directing a particular play of their choosing at the participating regional theatre. The play must be the work of an internationally renowned dramatist (living or dead). Short-listed candidates will be required to participate in directing workshops with professional actors in order to demonstrate their directorial skills. Finalists will be interviewed.
The Award winner will be selected by a panel of respected theatre practitioners appointed by the RTST. There will be an official runner-up.
The play that is directed by the Award winner at the participating regional theatre will be the play that was the subject of the winner’s Award Scheme entry, subject to availability of the performance rights, and unless otherwise agreed.
The Scheme will promote the RTST’s charitable objectives in four ways; it will:
- support emerging talent in the theatre;
- support regional theatre;
- facilitate and support a particular production in a regional theatre; and
- promote the work of an internationally renowned dramatist.
The RTST hopes that the Scheme will appeal to a diverse range of candidates and that it will play a part in promoting diversity in the theatre, onstage and offstage, and among audiences.
The RTST’s intention is to run the Scheme annually, and to work with different regional theatres. The detailed terms of the Scheme in any given year will be published on the RTST’s website. The terms may vary from year to year.
The RTST is delighted to be launching the RTST Director Award Scheme in 2016 with Sheffield Theatres.
For full details of the 2016 Scheme visit our RTST Director Award 2016 page.