2025 Playwrights ’73 Award

The Peggy Ramsay Foundation has announced the recipients of the 2025 Playwrights ’73 Award, and we're delighted to be welcoming playwright Kat Rose-Martin on attachment to the SJT!

It has been announced today that the Peggy Ramsay Foundation will take primary responsibility for funding the Playwrights ‘73 Award, which places four playwrights with four UK theatres for 18 months and funds them to write a new play.

The playwrights named as recipients of the Playwrights ‘73 bursaries 2025 are Kat Rose-Martin, who will work with us here at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Sarah Dickenson (Exeter Northcott Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe), Tife Kusoro (The Royal Court), and Ciara Elizabeth Smyth (The Traverse Theatre). Each playwright will receive £15,000 through the duration of the 18 month project to write a new play.

Bradford born and based, Kat is a writer/actor and inaugural winner of the Kay Mellor Fellowship. In 2020 she was part of BBC Writersroom's Northern Voices. In 2021 she was selected for SKY COMEDY REP - a writer’s scheme with Birmingham Rep Theatre and Sky. Her play £1 Thursdays was named "The finest new play I saw in 2023" by Gary Naylor at Broadway World.

For screen, her TV Drama The Crossleys made the BAFTA Rocliffe TV Drama Top 10 and is now in development in the US. She has original TV projects in development, at treatment stage, with Rollem, Dancing Ledge, Urban Myths, Warp and APC. She has a pilot commission with BBC3. Her script Ursula, developed with RED Productions, made The Brit List 2021.    

Theatre includes Aphra Behn (Shakespeare’s Globe),Jane Hair (Bronte Society), Shit but Mine (Paines Plough), Children of War (Sheffield Theatres), Whooosh (Pilot Theatre) and development of Pick N Mix (Freedom Studios) and Cheap as Chips (Leeds Playhouse).

She says:

“I’m so thrilled to be working with SJT! My dad used to put out chairs for Alan Ayckbourn many moons ago. Scarborough and this theatre have always had a very special place in my heart. I can’t wait to join such a nurturing and passionate team and share my work with the wonderful audiences here.”

SJT Producer Amy Fisher added:

“The Stephen Joseph Theatre has a long history of supporting playwrights and new writing, and we’re delighted to receive the Playwright ’73 award in the year we celebrate our 70th birthday.

"We’re excited about having Kat Rose-Martin on attachment with us here in Scarborough throughout 2025. We’ve already started plotting and we’re really looking forward to what we might create together in the coming months.”

Margaret 'Peggy' Ramsey was the agent to some of the most influential playwrights of the 20th century - including our very own Director Emeritus Alan Ayckbourn - until her death in 1991. The Peggy Ramsay Foundation was formed in 1992 by Laurence Harbottle and Simon Callow out of the estate of literary agent Peggy Ramsay. In 2024 PRF gave grants to 78 playwrights worth £266,000 in total and in the last 10 years PRF has given £2m to playwrights.