The panel of judges, chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, chose Hassan Abdulrazzak out of a shortlist of six nominees for his cultural impact on the general British public’s understanding of the Arab world. The judges felt that through his work, particularly his second full-length play The Prophet, Abdulrazzak had risen to the occasion at a time where the Middle East is highlighted as a volatile and inaccessible place.

Abdulrazzak has written three successful full length plays and six short plays and he is currently working on three screenplays and a further full-length play, A Fire Blazing Brightly.

Describing his passion for writing plays, Abdulrazzak explained that, ‘theatre has the power to radically challenge your assumptions regarding a people or a culture and it can do so within the span of two or three hours’. He then went on to discuss his emerging career, ‘one of the main motivations behind becoming a playwright, other than to tell good stories, was to present aspects of Arab culture as I know it which I felt were absent from mainstream depictions in Britain and elsewhere’.

The Arab British Centre would like to congratulate Hassan Abdulrazzak and the five shortlisted nominees; Danah Abdulla, Khyam Allami, Daniel Gorman, Reem Kelani and Amin Matalqa. Huge thanks also to the prestigious panel of judges for selecting a wonderful array of individuals who we look forward to working with in the near future in promoting their work.