Sabi Arts Limited has launched the Sabi Arts Playwright Prize, a new annual award for emerging Nigerian playwrights, with a prize pool of 1.4 million naira and opportunities for production, residency and publication.
Open to Nigerian writers aged 18 and above living in the country or diaspora, the prize is accepting original plays that have not previously been published or produced.
The top prize comes with 1 million naira and script development towards a full stage production in collaboration with Ouida Lagos. The winning play is expected to be staged before a live audience within 36 months of the winner’s announcement. The playwright will also receive a place in Sabi Arts’ next writers’ residency programme.
A runner-up will receive 200,000 naira and a place in the residency programme.
The remaining 200,000 naira of the money poll is attached to the Julie Okoh Prize, named after Nigerian playwright and University of Port Harcourt Professor of Theatre Theory Julie Okoh. Reserved for a woman playwright, the category will recognise a work centred on women’s experiences and issues. Sabi Arts will develop the selected play for a stage reading within 12 months, subject to its production calendar, while the writer will also join the company’s next residency programme.
Entries will go through a three-stage blind review process, beginning with an anonymous readers’ group that will determine the longlist. A second round will produce the shortlist before the final selections are made by a four-person jury.
The inaugural jury comprises playwright and Young Playwrights’ Theater Artistic Director Farah Lawal Harris; 1000 Stories founder and creative director Kelvin Mary Ndukwe; New Culture Studio Artistic Director Rufus Nwoko; and playwright and director Kesiena C. Obue, founder of Kessavier Vanille Productions.
Sabi Arts plans to announce the longlist on January 31, 2027, followed by the shortlist on February 28 and the winners on March 31.
Six plays from the inaugural edition will also be published in a digital anthology. The collection will feature the three winning scripts and three other shortlisted works chosen by the jury.
The prize was established by Sabi Arts founder Ibi Kontein, a Nigerian playwright, theatre producer, director and researcher who founded the theatre company in 2018.
“Research lets me test claims against outcomes, but theatre puts an audience in a room with the person those claims are actually about,” Kontein said in a statement announcing the prize. “The Sabi Arts Playwright Prize extends this commitment to deliberate, socially engaged theatre by investing directly in the dramatists capturing contemporary African life in all its complexity.”
Her previous stage works include Back For Ground, staged at the MUSON Centre in Lagos, and Dear Applicant, a satire about job seeking that made its UK debut at Theatre Peckham. Her productions have been presented across Lagos, Ogun, Port Harcourt, London and Edinburgh.
Kontein is currently completing a PhD in International Relations at American University, where her research examines state protection rhetoric and women’s security in conflict.
Submissions for the inaugural edition opened on October 1 and will close on December 20, 2026.
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