image: from left to right – Peg Woffington as the Female Volunteer, Lillah McCarthy in The Bacchae, Dan Leno as Widow Twankey 

The Society for Theatre Research is delighted to announce the results of the 2020 New Scholars Essay competition.

Joint First Prizes were awarded to

David Bullen for his essay on ‘Dionysus the New Woman: Maenadic and Feminist Intersections in Lillah McCarthy’s 1908 Bacchae‘

Yizhou Huang for her essay ‘The Birth of Widow Twankey’

and

Annette Rubery for her essay on ‘Peg Woffington as Lothario in The Fair Penitent‘.

The competition was open to postgraduate students, academics with an institutional affiliation, and independent scholars, but not undergraduates. Entrance was  restricted to scholars who have had no more than one article previously published in a refereed journal. Entrants did not need to be members of the STR or to reside in the UK

The essays were judged double- blind by Professor Siobhan Keenan and Professor Jane Milling chaired by Professor Trevor R Griffiths. The prizes include a cash element, a one-year subscription to the STR, a selection of STR books and the guarantee that the essay will be considered for inclusion by Theatre Notebook under its normal guidelines.

David Bullen has a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, where he has taught in the Department of Drama, Theatre, and Dance since 2013. Currently he is writing a monograph, Greek Tragedy in 21st Century British Theatre, for Liverpool University Press. He has served as co-artistic director of London-based performance ensemble By Jove since 2011.

Yizhou Huang is a PhD candidate in theatre at Tufts University.

Annette Rubery is an independent scholar with a PhD in English and Comparative Literary Studies from the University of Warwick (1999). An Alumni Communications Manager at Aston University, she is writing a biography of Peg Woffington during evenings and weekends.

For more about the New Scholars Prize, see the page here