Winners announced for 2025 Bruntwood Prize

Tolu Okanlawon has been named the winner of the 2025 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting with his debut play, Shooters.

The Bruntwood Prize, now in its 20th year, is run in partnership with Bruntwood, the Oglesby Charitable Trust and the Royal Exchange Theatre. Okanlawon receives £20,000 for his play, which is based on real events and centres on the African American photojournalist Gordon Parks and his work in 1940s Harlem.

Okanlawon, from Hackney, East London, works across television, film, documentary and theatre. He was recently selected for the Diverse Writers Development Programme supported by Left Bank Pictures, the National Film and Television School and Sony Pictures Television. The article continues below. 

Silva Semerciyan won the Judges Award with Przewalski’s Horses, which follows a woman escaping Kyiv to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Jesús I Valles received the International Award for Spread, about a group of ninth grade boys growing up in Texas.

Daisy Miles was awarded the North-West Original New Voice Award and Residency for R Lady’s, her first full-length play. A special commendation went to Terri Jade Donovan for Dog Dog Dog, exploring the impact of childhood trauma and neglect.

The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting is the UK’s largest national playwriting competition, run in partnership between the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester and property company Bruntwood. Open to writers of any background, the anonymous prize has received over 17,000 entries since it began, awarding nearly £400,000 to 43 winners whose plays have gone on to win major awards and reach audiences worldwide.

Each winning script enters development with the Royal Exchange, with many plays co-produced by theatres across the UK and internationally. This year marks the Prize’s 20th anniversary.