Alex Brown wins £25k JMK Young Director Award

Brown, who has been assistant director on Jez Butterworth‘s The River at the Royal Court and The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida, will receive funds to stage a production
at the Young Vic this Autumn.

He was selected from a shortlist of seven
young directors, with Kim Pearce announced as runner-up. The other
finalists were Michael Bryher, Tom Bailey, Jennifer Tang, Anna Marsland
and Mel Hillyard.

The award, which was presented this evening at the Young Vic, has been increased to £25,000 this year (from £18,000
last year) to further assist young directors with the costs of staging
their productions.

Stephen Fewell, Chair of the JMK Trust, said: “This year we’ve been fundraising feverishly to increase the JMK Award
to £25,000; more than double the amount of two years ago. Thanks to the
support of some highly generous donors, this will let Alex wage his
creative team at Equity levels- a fundamental prerequisite for making
theatre.

“We are also significantly stepping up our regional work to try
and combat the ‘pinch’ that development work is experiencing;
institutional cuts from above and rising living costs from below.”

Brown, who graduated from English and Drama at Sussex University in 2009, was a director on Old Vic New Voices: 24 Hour Plays and went on
to work on OVNV’s Ignite project (2010) and TS Eliot Exchange (2012).
He also trained through workshops with Living Pictures and on the Young
Vic’s Genesis Directors Network.

Fewell added: “Alex, through the JMK Award and a space at the Young Vic, gets a big opportunity to learn through making theatre, rather than by assisting or studying. As the theatre ecology adapts to circumstance, we hope to increase our role in safeguarding its widely-celebrated ongoing creative and economic success and, crucially, to create further such opportunities.”

The JMK Trust was set up to commemorate the talented young director James Menzies-Kitchin, whose career was cut short by his sudden death at the age of 28.