“We’re looking for the best new original plays about the climate and nature crisis that talk about our connection to each other, to the world around us, just like Shakespeare did.”
These are the words of Guy Meirion Jones, New Work Associate at Shakespeare’s Globe:
Jones was announcing The Climate Playwriting Prize 2026, which will “uncover the most exciting new plays about the climate crisis, and support them to find their audiences.” I can’t wait…
The Globe’s website explains: “We believe that playwrights have a vital role to play in the conversation around the climate.”
It continues: “This moment is marked by rising temperatures, escalating impacts of change on communities and ecosystems, but also by the potential for us to transform society for a flourishing, equitable future for all life. The need for new stories that help audiences grapple with the realities and possibilities of this crisis has never been clearer”.
If you look closely at the image above, you’ll see Shakespeare’s Globe is running the prize alongside Fern Culture and Climate Spring, two organisations most people have never heard of, but are increasingly having an impact on our drama. Climate Spring is the more interesting of the two, as it has worked on BBC productions…
… such as the recent BBC drama The Rapture, which had storylines about climate change…
… including a scene about how a baddie organisation was “lobbying to overturn net zero” (the horror!).
Climate Spring has some big funders, including the Wellcome Trust, which received £105,998,100 from taxpayers between 2020-24(!), as well as:
