Marcus wins £5k Faber New Play Award

Carmen Marcus’ And The Earth Opened Up Under Her has won the £5,000 Faber New Play Award, which offers publication to coincide with the premiere.

The prize was granted to the best play written by an unpublished playwright under the WGGB New Play Commission Scheme, which was a response to the decline in new theatre commissions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Eighteen commissions were offered to playwrights across England in 2022 and Marcus’ play was commissioned by the Pilot Theatre in York.

The judges for the Faber New Play Award were playwrights Dipo Baruwa-Etti and Beth Steel, dramaturg and translator Chris Campbell, and, at Faber, Lily Levinson and Dinah Wood.

Baruwa-Etti commented: "And The Earth Opened Up Under Her is an ambitious and bold play, telling a story of complex human relationships with a rich theatricality and poetry that is exciting and showcases a promising new voice."

Wood, editorial director for drama at Faber, said: "New writing is the animating force in our drama publishing, and it was wonderful to read and discuss five wildly various plays, among them this dark and mysterious work, written in Carmen’s poetic voice."

David Edgar, former WGGB president and architect of the New Play Commission Scheme, commented: "We were delighted when Faber joined up with the New Play Commission Scheme, making a generous donation and launching an award to encourage unpublished playwrights to enter for the scheme. We’re happy that all of the eligible playwrights entered, and that the standard was so high.

"Carmen Marcus’s play transfers an ancient myth into contemporary England; we can’t wait to see it on stage and to read it in print."

Marcus’ debut novel How Saints Die (Vintage) won New Writing North’s Northern Promise Award and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. She was selected as a BBC Radio 3 The Verb New Voice and her poetry has been commissioned by BBC Radio, the Royal Festival Hall, and Durham Book Festival.

She added: "This fever-dream of a play is a working-class reimagining of the Persephone and Demeter myth. It intertwines the stories of scoundrels my Irish mother told me, the wolfish fairy tales I loved, Christina Rossetti’s ’Goblin Market’, and Jim Henson’s ’Labyrinth’. It is set on the North East coast of England, where the hellish blast furnace fumed over the dunes and wild woods of my childhood.

"This play is a keening written in the same year I lost my mother, Bridget, to dementia. My mum always said she’d go to Hell and back for us and this is that journey laid bare – what Hell looks like for girls, women and mothers as they negotiate the underworlds of their fears and desires."