THE BILL CASHMORE AWARD

Submissions are now OPEN for the second year of the Bill Cashmore Award: One Act Play Prize.

The Bill Cashmore Award, presented by Young Lyric, offers a paid opportunity for two new one-act plays by writers aged 18-30, to be professionally produced at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre. The two winning plays will run as a double bill and will be performed by the Lyric’s SPRINGBOARD trainee actors in Autumn 2026.

The award is kindly supported by the Bill Cashmore Award Founder Sasha Bates. Young Lyric is funded to support and provide opportunities for children and young people through programmes, workshops and activities.

We particularly welcome submissions from those who are underrepresented in theatre and/or situated in areas culturally underserved – please see our FAQs for more information.

To submit, you must:

Be aged 18-30 at the time of submission and based in the U.K. (incl Northern Ireland)
Be without professional representation (ie. a literary agent)
Have no more than 2 professional writing credits

Your script must:

Be written for stage by a single author
Be no more than 25 pages with a running length of 30 minutes
Be submitted in size 12 Arial font
Be suitable for a cast of 5 actors aged 18-25
Not have been previously professionally staged to a paying audience (R&Ds and sharings are not included in this criteria)

The two successful writers will:

Receive a fee of £4,000.11 (exclusive of royalties)
Receive an agreed contribution to your travel for attendance in person if required
Be creatively involved in shaping the marketing and involved in the rehearsal process
Receive dramaturgical support
Receive complimentary invites to tickets to all performances
Be invited to Lyric Press Nights

Please read our FAQs for more details on all of the above.

Applications close on Tuesday 6^th January at 12pm. All scripts are anonymised from personal information before being submitted to our panel.

The Bill Cashmore Award - 2025 Submissions

Full name(Required)

Writer name (if applicable)

Pronouns(Required)

Date of birth(Required)

dd/mm/yyyy

Residential address Line 1(Required)

Residential address Line 2(Required)

Village, town and/or city(Required)

Postcode(Required)

Country(Required)

Primary contact email(Required)

Please note that we will be responding to your submission via this email.

Primary contact phone number(Required)

How do you define your gender?(Required)

How do you define your ethnicity?(Required)

Do you consider yourself to be d/Deaf, disabled, or with a long-term physical or mental health condition?(Required)

Yes

No

Prefer not to say

Other

If yes, could you please provide further details?(Required)

Do you have any access requirements you would like to make us aware of?(Required)

We will always support and/or accommodate these to the best of our abilities. This could be, requiring step free access, specific formatting of text, etc.

Title of script(Required)

Script outline (no more than 200 words)(Required)

Script upload(Required)

Max. file size: 512 MB.

I can confirm I am between the ages of 18-30 at time of submission.(Required)

Yes

I can confirm my script is no more than 25 pages and is uploaded in PDF format.(Required)

Yes

I can confirm I am a resident based in the U.K.(Required)

Yes

I can confirm I have not submitted more than one script for consideration.(Required)

Yes

Please tick if you have used AI-generated software to edit your submitted script.

Yes

If yes, how have you used AI to edit your script.

View our Bill Cashmore Award FAQs for why we are asking you this.

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