Shôn Dale-Jones has been announced as the winner of the 2024 Tinniswood Award, which is organised by WGGB and The Society of Authors to celebrate the best audio drama script of the year
Dale-Jones (pictured above centre) received the accolade for Cracking, presented to him by playwright, audio dramatist, screenwriter and author Hannah Khalil (above right), at the BBC Audio Drama Awards on Sunday 24 March 2024. It was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 (listen here).
The BBC Audio Drama Awards were this year hosted by Meera Syal (pictured above left).
Cracking tells the story of Shôn’s 83-year-old mother who is waiting for some test results from the hospital, so he goes back home to the Isle of Anglesey to visit her. In a moment of joking around, he cracks an egg on his mother’s head. All hell is let loose. Internet trolls appear in real life demanding that he stops abusing his mother and gets off the island. Cracking is a dark comedy about how quickly reality can slip into fiction and how fiction can become more true in our minds. It is about the fear of losing our parents and our collective outrage against things that do happen and things that don’t happen.
Taking real life events as inspiration, Cracking weaves fiction and reality together into a seamless whole and laughs at the dangers of not knowing you don’t know the truth.
Shôn Dale-Jones comes from the Isle of Anglesey, where he spent his entire childhood. He studied Drama at the University of East Anglia before training at Jacques Lecoq’s International Theatre School in Paris. He has been making theatre and radio for almost 30 years. His work has been translated into seven languages and played on six continents. He’s made 29 live shows. Cracking is his sixth play for radio.
The other shortlisted plays for the Tinniswood Award were Scooters, Shooters and Shottas by John R. Gordon; About a Dog by Huw Brentnall and Ghosted by Lindsay Sharman (further information here).
ABOUT THE TINNISWOOD AWARD
The Tinniswood Award was established by Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and Society of Authors to perpetuate the memory of Peter Tinniswood (pictured left) as well as to celebrate and encourage high standards in radio drama. Previous winners include Anita Sullivan, Sonya Hale, Christopher Douglas, Ian Martin, Sarah Woods, Oliver Emanuel, Morwenna Banks, Mike Bartlett, and Colin Teevan. Find out more.
We are very grateful to the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) for its generous sponsorship, including the £3,000 prize.
The 2024 award is for a drama broadcast or made available online in the UK between 1 October 2022 and 31 October 2023.
Main photo: Tricia Yourkevich/BBC
