2022 Award

Hannah Shury-Smith. Photo credit: Richard H Smith

Hannah Shury-Smith won with her play Go Back Home! The winner of the £6,000 prize was presented with her award by Dona Croll. This year, the Awards were held in the Dorfman Theatre at the National Theatre on Friday, 11^th November.

Also announced was the recipient of the Roland Rees Bursary Max Kolaru; and the winner of the second Mustapha Matura Award and Mentoring Programme Kwame Owusu.

Tributes were also paid to Mona Hammond and Josephine Melville who both passed away this year.

On winning, Hannah said, “I found out about the Alfred Fagon Award two years ago when I wrote an article for The British Blacklist encouraging writers to submit their plays. Since then, I have greatly admired the work done by the Alfred Fagon and Mustapha Matura Awards. The longlists and shortlists for the Alfred Fagon Award catalogue the Black British writers that have shaped and continue to shape the British theatre, TV and film landscapes. My writing has been inspired by these writers – Dipo Baruwa Etti, babirye bukilwa, Inua Ellams, Nicôle Lecky, Ryan Calais Cameron, Patricia Cumper, Tyrrell Williams, Theresa Ikoko, Yasmin Joseph, Michaela Coel and Jasmine Lee-Jones – so to have won this award and see my name beside theirs still blows my mind. Thank you so much to the judges for taking my play on this journey. I look forward to seeing what the future will bring.”

Mimi Findlay, Chair of the Judges said, “Hannah’s experimental depiction of a play with dementia, exploration of home, and belonging at the centre of the themes of the play is in it’s purest form a deeply intimate play, that quietly knows it needn’t be epic – because it is universal. The judges loved that Hannah challenged herself to let this play remain in a chaotic and jumbled state at times – so that we might authentically understand with compassion, the disruption and destruction that dementia causes.”