The winners of the 2021 South Bank Sky Arts Awards were announced last night (Monday 19 July), with Samuel Bailey, and Conor McPherson's new version of Chekhov classic Uncle Vanya, amongst those honoured.

Samuel Bailey was named as the recipient of the Times Breakthrough Award for his acclaimed debut play Shook. This tender and honest drama, set in a young-offender institution, won the Papatango New Writing Prize in 2019, and was premiered by Papatango at Southwark Playhouse in October 2019, followed by a UK tour. Its planned West End transfer in 2020 was cancelled by the COVID pandemic. However, Shook was subsequently filmed in collaboration with BAFTA-winning filmmaker James Bobin, with the filmed version currently available to watch online here until 31 July.

Elsewhere, Conor McPherson's acclaimed new version of Anton Chekhov's classic play Uncle Vanya took home the Theatre Award. Praised by WhatsOnStage as 'a feat of magical reinvention', the production opened at the Harold Pinter Theatre, in London's West End, in January 2020, before being forced to close due to the pandemic. A film of the production was later shot on the Harold Pinter stage, before being released in cinemas and broadcast on BBC Four. It is currently available to view on BBC iPlayer.

Marking 25 years in 2021, the South Bank Sky Arts Awards is the only Awards ceremony in the world to celebrate every genre of the Arts, including Dance, Theatre, Pop, TV Drama, Film, Classical Music, Literature, Opera, Comedy and Visual Art. The winners of the 2021 Awards were announced at a ceremony at the Savoy Hotel, London, which will be broadcast on Sky Arts at 9pm on Thursday 22 July.

As world leaders prepare to gather in Glasgow for the International Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November 2021, acclaimed youth-theatre organisation Company Three and Nick Hern Books are inviting youth theatres, schools, and community groups everywhere to come together and share the stories of the young people whose futures depend on the Conference's outcome.

Participating groups will join youth-theatre companies from across the UK to create their own, unique version of a brand-new play, called When This Is Over, and perform it between September 2021 and February 2022. This exciting, mass-participatory cultural event builds on collaborative development of the play earlier in 2021, involving 16 youth theatres from across the UK.

When This Is Over is a play in which young people tell the stories of their lives. It is about what has happened to them in the past, who they are right now, and who they want to be in the future. It’s not directly a play about COVID or the climate crisis, but about the young people who will live through and negotiate the impacts of both. It’s a chance to amplify the voices of a pivotal generation at a pivotal time, so that their stories can inform the decisions we take about the future.

To help them create their own version of When This Is Over, participating groups will receive extensive resources and support. These include a ‘Blueprint’ of ideas, activities and exercises based on Company Three’s work on the play so far, as well as access to a community of practice, connecting all of the groups who are also creating their own production of When This Is Over – attending workshops, sharing their discoveries, and forming links which will sustain beyond the project. Participating groups will also have the opportunity for their young people’s stories to be recorded in an interactive online archive.

All interested groups are invited to sign up now to create their own production of When This Is Over, for a participation fee of £100 (plus VAT where applicable) per company. For full information, and to sign up to create your own production, head to the When This Is Over page on our website.

We're excited to share news of the launch of an exclusive new podcast series, Hamilton and Us with Giles Terera – available now on all major platforms including Apple, Spotify and Google.

This exciting new series offers Hamilton fans and musical-theatre lovers the chance to hear what it was like to be part of the original London production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash-hit musical Hamilton, as told by the people who were there. New episodes will be released each Thursday for the next six weeks, starting today (Thursday 27 May).

In each episode, host Giles Terera – who won the Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as Aaron Burr in the original West End cast, and is the author of upcoming book Hamilton and Me: An Actor's Journal ­– is joined by key members of the cast and creative team of the London production, plus other special guests, to discuss what it was like to be part of this once-in-a-generation show. Listeners will hear all about their audition stories, that first day of rehearsals, funny and memorable moments, and more – but also about what Hamilton meant to those who were involved, how it changed them as people, and its potential to create positive, meaningful change in our world.

Episode 1, featuring Hamilton director Thomas Kail, is available now on all major podcast platforms – you can find links to listen here.

This podcast series has been created by Nick Hern Books to celebrate the upcoming publication of Giles Terera’s book Hamilton and Me: An Actor’s Journal ­­– his own personal account of researching, rehearsing and performing in the original London production. Hamilton and Me is published on 1 July, and is available to order now.

The winners of this year's Music & Drama Education Awards were announced yesterday (24 March), with Platform, Nick Hern Books' partnership with Tonic Theatre, taking home the prize for Outstanding Drama Initiative.

Commissioned by Tonic Theatre and published and licensed by NHB, Platform is a new series of plays for young people to read, study and perform. Responding to the current lack of roles for girls in writing for young actors, all the plays in the Platform series offer flexible, majority- or all-female casts, and put young women and their stories at the heart of the action.

Since Platform first launched in 2015, the plays have been performed hundreds of times by schools, colleges, youth-theatre groups and others across the UK, as well as internationally in countries including Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Malta, New Zealand and the USA. These productions have offered meaningful and enriching performance opportunities to thousands of young people, with all the benefits participating in youth drama provides.

Seven Platform plays are currently available to read and perform – see more about them here.

The winners of the Music & Drama Education Awards 2021 were announced in an online ceremony on 24 March. To see more information, including the full list of winners and shortlists, visit the Awards' website.

We're delighted to announce that Hamilton and Me: An Actor’s Journal by Giles Terera is available to pre-order ahead of publication on 1 July – and we're offering a special £5 discount when you reserve your copy via our website.

The book is a personal inside account of the London production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash-hit, multi-award-winning Hamilton, written by the actor who won the Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as Aaron Burr.

Drawn from a journal Terera kept throughout the period of preparation, rehearsal and performance, it offers an honest, intimate and thrilling look at everything involved in opening a once-in-a-generation production – the triumphs, breakthroughs and doubts, the camaraderie of the rehearsal room and the moments of quiet backstage contemplation – as well as a fascinating, in-depth exploration of now-iconic songs and moments from the world-famous musical, as seen from the inside. It is illustrated with dozens of colour photographs, many of which are previously unseen, and features a Foreword by Hamilton creator and original star Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Save £5 and get your copy of Hamilton and Me for just £11.99 (RRP £16.99) – no voucher code required – when you pre-order via our website. Plus, we're also offering copies signed by author Giles Terera, at the same £5 discount – these are only available while stocks last, so reserve yours now to avoid disappointment.

Our office is now closed until Monday 4 January. Any orders placed via our website will now not be processed until after that date. If you require your print books or CDs more urgently, please try an alternative retailer.

Ebook orders will continue to be fufilled as normal, though support will be limited between Thursday 23 December and Monday 4 January.

Our info@nickhernbooks.co.uk email account will be checked intermittently, but our phone lines are closed. Thanks, and Merry Christmas.

Entries for the Papatango Prize 2021 opened today (27 November), with submissions accepted until 7 February.

The 2021 edition of the Prize – run by Papatango, one of the UK's most renowned new-writing companies, in partnership with English Touring Theatre – has been adapted to respond to the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This time, three winners will each receive £2000 for their plays, which will be recorded as audio productions and will then tour the UK in free listening stations, with scripts including braille translations, so that audiences everywhere can enjoy brilliant new writing in their local theatre when such programming is under threat. Venues already confirmed for the tour include Bristol Old Vic, Bush Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse, Lyric Theatre Belfast, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, Theatre Clwyd and Theatre Royal Plymouth.

The winning plays will also be published in ebook format by NHB.

The Papatango Prize is free to enter, scripts are judged anonymously, and every entry receives individual feedback. To see full information about the Prize, and to enter, visit the Papatango website.

Let's be honest, 2020 has been a really tough year – which makes this #LoveTheatreDay a more special and vital occasion than ever. Theatres and companies may have been forced to shut their doors and down tools for now, but we can still come together to celebrate and appreciate the art-form we all love.

So we're marking the occasion by offering you the chance to save 40% on dozens of great NHB playscripts and theatre books, for 24 hours only, in our #LoveTheatreDay Sale!

The Sale runs from 10am GMT on Wednesday 18 November to 10am GMT on Thursday 19 November. No voucher code is required – just fill your basket with as many of the brilliant titles below as you like, head to checkout, and your discount will be automatically applied. This offer applies to paperback and ebook editions of the titles included (where available).

Plus, £1 from every book sold in our #LoveTheatreDay Sale will go to the Theatre Artists Fund, which provides emergency support for theatre-workers and freelancers across the UK affected by the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the theatre sector.

Visit our #LoveTheatreDay Sale page for more information.

The recipients of the Olivier Awards 2020 were announced last night (Sunday 25 October), with NHB-published Dear Evan Hansen one of the ceremony's big winners.

The acclaimed, groundbreaking show by Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul took home three prizes: Best New Musical, Best Original Score or New Orchestrations, and Best Actor in a Musical (Sam Tutty). Its Olivier Awards wins follow the huge success of Dear Evan Hansen's Broadway premiere, where it won six Tony Awards including Best Musical, as well as the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.

Dear Evan Hansen was playing at the Noel Coward Theatre in London's West End, until it was forced to close in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is currently slated to return in 2021.

NHB author Conor McPherson's acclaimed new version of Anton Chekhov classic Uncle Vanya will be released in cinemas internationally on 27 October, it was announced today (21 September). The production will also be broadcast on BBC Four later in 2020.

Directed by Ian Rickson, it will feature the original cast, led by Toby Jones and Richard Armitage, with the exception of Ciarán Hinds, who has been replaced by Roger Allam. The filmed version was recorded over the past month, following the show's early closure in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conor McPherson's Uncle Vanya premiered in January 2020 at the Harold Pinter in London's West End to rave reviews, with WhatsOnStage calling it 'a feat of magical reinvention'. The playscript is currently available at a 30% discount in our Still on the Page promotion, which celebrates the dozens of NHB-published productions that were cut short or cancelled due to COVID-19.

For more information about Uncle Vanya, and to book tickets, head to the production's website.