STR Theatre Book Prize

THEATRE BOOK PRIZE WINNER ANNOUNCED

A packed audience of theatre and book people gathered this morning, April 7th to hear the winner of the STR Theatre Book Prize announced. They were welcomed by Ian Herbert, Chairman of STR who introduced the adminstrator of the Prize, Howard Loxton, who also chairs the judging panel, to begin the formal part of the event.

After thanking Really Useful Theatres for making the elegant venue of the Grand Saloon at Drury Lane Theatre available and speaking about the range of book submitted in 2008 he handed over to the judges (theatre director and choreographer Omar Okai, Professor Kate Newey of the University of Birmingham and Ian Shuttleworth, theatre critic of the Financial Times) to speak about the short list titles and others they found particularly interesting.

Steven Berkoff.

This led to the moment everyone had been waiting for when the winner was revealed. No-one could be more appropriate for the task than the poet, writer of short stories, autobiography and books on theatre, who has undertaken the task for he is also a fine actor, director and dramatist:

Steven Berkoff, who is currently starring in his own acclaimed production of On the Waterfront at Theatre Royal, Haymarket.

And the winner:
Theatre and Globalisation by Patrick Lonergan, published by Palgrave Macmillan.

When discussing some of the books entered, judge Kate Newey said of the winner:

"We were all quite surprised at our nomination of Patrick Lonergan's Theatre and Globalisation for the short list. Each of us recounted how we picked it up, expecting difficult concepts, expressed in the highly technical language of economics and political theory, and with not much to speak to us as working theatre practitioners or scholars, only to find that each of us was gripped by the book. For me, it spoke to so much of what is current in theatre as an industry; and indeed, reinforces what I say as a theatre historian - that the theatre always has been a globalised international industry. Lonergan discusses the ways in which Irish theatre is a text-book example of an apparently unique national culture, marketed internationally. He introduces sophisticated ideas, with clarity and humour, and identifies the ways in which all of us think about the global and the local at the same time."

Patrick Lonergan teaches in the English Department at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

A full report of the event, with photographs, is available here.