Eastern Angles playwright wins top award!

Janice Okoh's play Egusi Soup, a co-production between Eastern Angles and Menagerie Theatre Company directed by Paul Bourne, toured East Anglia back in October 2009 as part of that year's Black History Month celebrations.

Now, Janice has won the £16,000 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting for her script for Three Birds, a play about three young siblings who are left home alone.

Playwright Simon Stephens, who chaired the judging panel, praised the play's "humanity and imagination".

Janice, from south-east London, worked in the City for seven years before taking an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. She has written three plays for BBC Radio 4 and teaches English as a foreign language.

Ivan Cutting said; "Egusi Soup was a fantastic story full of emotional baggage all about a British-Nigerian family who head back to Africa for a family funeral. The ‘script-in-hand' performances we staged back in 2009 were a great success. We really enjoyed working with Janice and congratulate her on her well-deserved prize"