The
Edith Ruddick Award was launched in May at the Criterion Theatre and
offers any writer who has been produced by IRDP in the last 10 years
the chance to win a £2,000 commission to write a 45 minute play.
The
Award is being established in memory of actress and writer Edith Ruddick
who made a significant contribution to radio drama throughout her
life. Her career encompassed BBC Radio's Children's Hour and Drama
alongside Stanley Baxter, Duncan Macrae and Fay Compton. She played
alongside Fulton Mackay and Burt Lancaster in the hit movie set in
Scotland 'Local Hero' in 1986. In addition to a distinguished acting
career in theatre, television films and radio, Edith wrote radio scripts,
lectured on various topics, appeared in TV advertisements and achieved
instant street recognition as a TV celebrity panellist. Her autobiography
My Mother's Daughter was published in 1995.
Writers
are being asked to produce a 2 page synopsis. The judges will consider
the synopsis and the writers' CVs and select one script for production.
The first Edith Ruddick award has also been made possible as a result
of a special grant from the Peggy Ramsey Foundation which recognised
the need to provide follow-up support for writers developed in the
independent sector of UK radio.
The
judging panel includes Edith Ruddick's sons Jonathan and Richard Brill,
the distinguished director and former head of BBC Radio Drama John
Tydeman, Sunday Times Radio columnist Paul Donovan, Jean-Norman Benedetti
(an international scholar specialising in Stanislavski), IRDP directors
Richard Shannon and Tim Crook and IRDP script development and Internet
communications director Marja Giejgo.
The
Edith Ruddick award was launched on May 15th when writers, actors
and directors gathered at the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus
to celebrate the announcement of the ten winning writers in the Woolwich
Young Radio Playwrights' Competition. Writers will be invited to submit
synopses during May, June, July and August. They will include all
previous winners of the Woolwich Young Radio Playwrights' Competition,
the London Radio Playwrights' Festival and also all writers who had
short plays broadcast as part of the Festival. The judging panel will
convene in September and the winning writer will be announced in October.
The commissioned script will be produced and directed by the award-winning
IRDP production / direction team of Tim Crook, Richard Shannon and
Marja Giejgo. The play will be performed by the country's leading
actors and sound designed in cinematic Dolby Prologic Surround Sound.
The production will be encoded and presented on the IRDP web site,
as well as being broadcast on LBC.
The
family of Edith Ruddick hopes that matching funding from their foundation
will secure further years of these awards and widen the opportunities
for writers in the alternative field of radio to be professionally
remunerated and recognised.
The
idea for the award was inspired by Edith Ruddick's sons, Jonathan
and Richard Brill.
Jonathan
Brill has had a distinguished career in the Arts and Education. He
has been chairman of the London Arts Board and Rose Bruford College,
and he is currently chairman of the Philharmonic Orchestra at Hertfordshire
University. He says "Mum would have loved all this; she revelled
in the PR thing. When her book was launched she did three quite formal
reading / signing sessions, and although her health was failing, she
took questions from the floor and even dealt with an affectionate
heckler. Radio was important to her all her life, increasingly so
when her sight began to fail her. One of her strongest assets as an
actress was her voice, which found full expression on radio".
Richard
Brill is a Computer consultant who emigrated to California in 1982.
He has worked for many industry leading companies and large government
agencies including the Los Angeles Mayor's Office. He is currently
consulting for a leading entertainment insurance company. He says
"Mum had a great sense of responsibility and in her later years
read newspapers for the blind. Her voice was an instrument she loved
using and she encouraged others to use theirs. She loved acting and
would be tickled pink with this award".
The
illustration shows the cover of Edith Ruddick's autobiography - My
Mother's Daughter.
Independent
Radio Drama Productions has established an alternative culture and
opportunity for original scriptwriting in audio drama since 1987.
Well over a hundred writers of all backgrounds and all ages have been
professionally produced with broadcasting on LBC in London, local
radio services elsewhere and on the World Wide Web.
Results
of The Edith Ruddick Award
this web page is brought to you by:
www.irdp.co.uk
