Korean-born playwright In-Sook Chappell has won the 2007 Verity Bargate Award for her play This Isn’t Romance, triumphing in the biennial competition over 800 other entrants. The prestigious award, given by the Soho theatre to the best play by an emerging writer, includes a prize of £5,000 and a residency at the theatre.
The winner of the award was chosen by a panel of judges which this year included former winner Bonnie Greer, playwrights Bryony Lavery, Gupreet Bhatti and Philip Ridley, Soho’s Artistic Director Lisa Goldman and Kim Noble and Stuart Silver of multi-media double act Noble+Silver.
Greer described This Isn’t Romance as a play that “has a brutal beauty which takes us into a hidden world”. It follows a Korean woman’s return to Seoul where she begins a highly charged relationship with the brother she left behind.
On winning the award, In-Sook, a former actor and model said: “Hearing I’d won the award was the greatest moment ever. It’s great when other people respond to something you’ve written – I feel vindicated, that my belief in my writing was not completely delusional.”
Among the runners up in the award were Zawe Ashton, Rosemary Jenkinson, Simon Bennett, Anders Lustgarten and Maxine Quintyne.
MA