Amy Trigg
REASONS YOU SHOULD(N’T) LOVE ME
“Winning the The Women’s Prize for Playwriting is such an honour. It’s a bit of a shock, but a lovely one! It’s been so joyful to be a part of this process and connect with such wonderful writers along the way. Thank you to everyone who made this award happen – the industry is lucky to have you.”
“My play is about a disabled woman but at its heart it is a universal story about love, growing up and feeling unfinished. I hope the audience finds the play relatable in lovely but sometimes heart breaking ways.
A year ago I was worried about sending my play out to be read by strangers. Would it be good enough? Would I feel exposed? Would I regret it? Fortunately, I had some mates who told me to “just do it”. If you are reading this and haven’t yet had that encouragement, then I’ll tell you now: “just do it”. I’ll be cheering you on!”
Ahlam
YOU BURY ME
“I am completely stunned and honoured to have won the inaugural Women’s Prize for Playwriting. I still cannot believe I might actually see one of my plays on a stage in the UK!”
“I hope You Bury Me offers a glimpse into the painful and beautiful paradox that is Cairo, and her stories that are full of love and tenderness, as well as rage and violence.
I want to thank everyone involved at The Women’s Prize for Playwriting for believing that this is a story worth telling, I cannot describe what this means to me.
For anyone thinking of applying, here’s some of the rejection feedback I’ve received for You Bury Me over the last 5 years: it’s not universal enough, it’s not local enough, don’t really know who it’s for, it’s confusing and complicated, it’s too difficult to cast and it just lacks weight. So please keep sending in your plays, we need your stories to find their stages.
Thank you again to everyone involved, this particular story is very important to me and I am beyond thrilled to have found people who want to hear it.”
ABOUT OUR WINNERS
Ahlam is an occasional writer, she tries to fit it between her anxiety about the end of the world and her anxiety about what her parents would think. When she’s not writing plays, she spends her time teaching herself how to put on liquid eye-liner, wondering why koshari isn’t the most popular dish in the world and contemplating who she would have been if she had grown up in Blacksburg (VA) instead of Cairo (Egypt).
Describe your play in a sentence:
The play is about love and resistance in Cairo.
Amy is an actor and writer from Essex. Born with Spina bifida, Amy was the first wheelchair user to graduate from a performance course at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.
Acting credits include: ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ and ‘Measure for Measure’ (Royal Shakespeare Company), ‘Shakespeare within the Abbey’ and ‘The Sonnet Walks’ (Shakespeare's Globe), ‘Goth Weekend’ (The Stephen Joseph Theatre and Live Theatre), ‘The Who’s Tommy’ (Tour), ‘The Glass Menagerie’ (Nottingham Playhouse), ‘Unprecedented’ (BBC and Headlong) and ‘Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again’ (Universal).
Amy’s essay ‘An Ode to Improvisation (and Poehler and Fey)’ features in the book ‘Feminist’s Don’t Wear Pink (and other lies)’, curated by Scarlett Curtis and published by Penguin. In 2014 Amy was a regular guest writer for Access Magazine. She is known for her one woman sketch 'The Rebrand' for which she won 'Colchester New Comedian of the Year 2016’. In 2020 Amy wrote two short digital plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company and Midsummer Festival.
REASONS YOU SHOULD(N’T) LOVE ME is Amy’s first full-length play.
Describe your play in a sentence:
Juno was born with Spina bifida and is now clumsily navigating her twenties amidst street healers, love, loneliness and the feeling of being an unfinished project.