We are delighted to announce that we are now welcoming applications for the Kevin Elyot Award 2026 to support a writer-in-residence at the Theatre Collection.
The Kevin Elyot Award is an annual award given to support a writer-in-residence based at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection. It is made in memory of actor and writer, Kevin Elyot (1951-2014) - an alumnus of the University Drama Department – and the influence he has had on writing and the Arts, the award is to enable a writer to be inspired by his work and help them develop their own practice. This year the award amount is £5,000.
The award holder will use the Kevin Elyot Archive (held at the Theatre Collection) to inspire a new dramatic work or other creative, curatorial or academic outcome. Comprising scripts, correspondence, manuscripts and publicity material, the archive details Elyot’s working process from initial idea to finished product.
The award has been generously funded through philanthropic funding including an endowment given to the University by members of Kevin’s family and will support a promising writer, practitioner or scholar to begin the process of creating a new written work.
The deadline for applications is midnight on Sunday 31st May.
Further details of the application process can be found here: Application Information Kevin Elyot Award 2026 (PDF, 210kB)
Further information
In 2025, the Kevin Elyot Award supported two recipients, James Ley, a playwright and screenwriter living in Glasgow and Roxana Vilk, a British Iranian writer, musician and performer based in Bristol. Both have written about their experience of the award and their time spent in the archive so far:
My Time in the Kevin Elyot Archive - James Ley
"I’m grateful to have been afforded time and space in the Kevin Elyot archive, looking through boxes that are nothing short of treasure troves. An incredible resource, they give access to a writer across Kevin’s whole career, from his astonishingly successful start, through to the honing of his craft for stage and screen, and it is thrilling to witness as he masters both artforms.
Two things that define Kevin’s work for me are honed ideas and raw passion. He nurtured his ideas tirelessly, filling as many notebooks as it took before the idea was ready to be brought to life as a play. This process has left an incredible footprint, particularly in his copious ‘My Night with Reg’ notebooks, which offer a frank, beautiful and fearless record of his reckoning with the unimaginable loss he suffered during the AIDS crisis, that he then bravely and generously turned into an incredible work of art.
On top of that, the passion powering his work and all that he had to say as an artist completely overwhelms the notebooks and only a fraction of it is distilled into his plays and screenplays. From my time reading his notebooks, in the peaceful surrounds of the Theatre Collection, I have been inspired to write an original play that began as a conversation with some of Kevin’s ideas and, one that responds to the challenge I take from his work: to write plays from a place of passion that really mean something and are worthy of underlining, circling and lots of exclamation marks!!
During the rest of my time in the archive, I intend to nurture this new play in the way that Kevin nurtured his. There was a great power in his filling notebooks and holding his ideas back until they were absolutely saturated, while at the same time letting his passion brew. It feels like this, combined with his exceptional talent, is what allowed Kevin to write his masterpieces. It’s been a privilege to have spent time getting to know his work so intimately, and I feel a deep gratitude to Kevin Elyot and to the Kevin Elyot Award for making that possible."
Roxana Vilk
"Spending time at the Kevin Elyot Archive is truly like entering a treasure trove for any playwright or screenwriter. At a time when everything feels so digital and screen-based, there is something wonderful about engaging with Elyot's writing process through his personal notebooks and the various handwritten drafts that preceded his typed scripts.
As writers, we spend so much time alone, and the process can involve many ups and downs and moments of self-doubt. Being close to Elyot's process has given me real comfort, seeing that these moments are part of every writer's journey, and that despite the ups and downs, he was constantly generating new ideas, some realised and others not, yet he carried on regardless.
Recently I have been particularly drawn to his adaptations of Agatha Christie's novels for the screen, of which he completed many. Witnessing and learning from his process of moving between stagecraft and screencraft has been genuinely illuminating. There is so much to absorb and be inspired by in this archive. I am so glad I applied, and I would urge anyone who is thinking of doing so to just go for it!"
