On 2 May 2017,  Richard Eyre will announce the winner of Theatre Book Prize at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.Previous winners include David Weston, for his memoir Covering McKellen, Ian Kelly’s Mr Foote’s Other Leg, which was adapted for Hampstead Theatre, Richard Eyre’s National Service and Daniel Rosenthal’s epic National Theatre Story.

The prize was established to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the Society for Theatre Research which was founded in 1948 and to encourage the writing and publication of books on theatre history and practice, both those which present the theatre of the past and those which record contemporary theatre for the future.  First awarded for books published in 1997, it is presented annually for a new book on British or British related theatre which an independent panel of judges considers to be the best published during the year. Play texts and studies of drama as literature are not eligible. The judges are drawn from theatre professionals, theatre critics, theatre academics and archivists, with a chairperson from the committee of the Society for Theatre Research.

Shortlist

Juggling Trajectories: Gandini Juggling MXMXCI – MMXV by Thomas J M Wilson (Gandini Press)

London’s West End Actresses and the Origins of Celebrity Charity, 1880-1920 by Catherine Hindson (University of Iowa Press)

Nobody Knows but Everyone Remembers by Mark Long (People Show)

Shakespeare in Ten Acts by Gordon McMullan & Zoe Wilcox (British Library Publications)

Stage Managing Chaos: A Diary of the Old Vic Production of Fernando Arrabal’s The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria by Jackie Harvey and Tim Kelleher (McFarland)

Theatrical Unrest: Ten Riots in the History of the Stage by Sean McEvoy (Routledge)

The Judges

Nichola McAuliffe, actress, director and author

Aleks Sierz critic, academic and author

Cathy Haill Victoria & Albert Museum Theatre Collections curator and author.

For information about the Society for Theatre Research and the Theatre Book Prize (with a full list of books entered in 2016) and previous winners see www.str.org.uk