Emerging playwrights from across the University of Cambridge have been recognised in this year’s ‘Other Prize,’ celebrating original verse writing and creative engagement with the traditions of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre.
English student Madeleine Whitmore of Lucy Cavendish College took first place for her play Velveteen, impressing judges with its originality and skill in handling verse form. Second place was awarded to Computer Science student Leo Lu of Churchill College for Raindrops on a White Pear Blossom, while Millie Chew, an MPhil student in Film and Screen Studies at St Edmund’s College secured third place with Dear Sister. Their achievements were celebrated with a drinks reception at Churchill College. The awards were judged by Dr Andrew Taylor, Dr David Collins, and Dr Joe Shaughnessy.
The prize is in association with, and part of the long-standing tradition of, The Marlowe Society, one of Cambridge’s historic and influential theatre groups. Founded in 1907, the Society has long been associated with innovative performances of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, alongside a commitment to keeping those traditions relevant to contemporary audiences.
‘The Other Prize’ plays a key role by encouraging students not just to study early modern drama, but to engage with it creatively through writing their own plays in verse. Its name reflects its origins: it was set up alongside the John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan Poetry Prize. Because that main prize was dedicated entirely to poetry, the playwriting award was simply designated as the ‘other’ prize, an initially secondary strand that has since developed its own significance.
Clare College student Niccolò Busuttil, who is co-president of the Marlowe Society alongside Andreas Marcou, attended and spoke about how the Other Prize supports the Society’s aim of keeping classical theatre relevant to contemporary audiences. The Marlowe Society not only revisits Shakespeare and his contemporaries but actively encourages fresh creative responses to their legacy. The Other Prize champions the writing of new verse plays as a way of sustaining this dialogue.
The significance of this creative engagement has also been explored by Tim Cribb, Fellow at Churchill College and author of Bloomsbury in British Theatre: The Marlowe Story, one of the few evaluative histories of the Society. His work underlines the importance of initiatives such as ‘The Other Prize’ in fostering new writing as part of a living theatrical tradition.
At its heart, ‘The Other Prize’ remains a vital platform for that process, supporting student playwrights as they experiment, innovate, and contribute to an ongoing conversation between the theatre of the past and the voices of today.