IN the 30 odd years since it started, no Scottish writer has ever won the George Devine award, the new playwriting award given annually in memory of the Royal Court's first artistic director. This extraordinary fact emerged this week at this year's award-giving ceremony at London's Duke of York's Theatre when Conor McPherson and the unknown - at least to English audiences - Enda Walsh became the latest recipients of the oldest and certainly one of the most prestigious of the ''most promising playwright'' awards for respectively McPherson's The Weir and Walsh's Disco Pigs and Sucking Dublin.
In a gathering of former Royal Court luminaries (directors Anthony Page, William Gaskill, Peter Gill, writer David Storey) and newer vintage - Ian Rickson and outgoing artistic director, film mogul-to-be, Stephen Daldry - McPherson and Walsh shared the laurels to join a swelling band of Irish writers (Anne Devlin and Billy Roche being just the most recent) who, over the years have picked up the prize, this year including a cash sum of #6000.
Other previous winners have included Edward Bond, Mike Leigh, Hanif Kureishi, and, more recently, Jez Butterworth and Martin McDonagh. But amazingly, John Byrne, Liz Lochhead, and Iain Heggie have never figured on the list. Nor for that matter have Chris Hannan, Rona Munro, or the rich, ''new wave'' crop of recent years - Simon Donald, David Greig, David Harrower, or Mike Cullen.
So what is going on? Even the Court's literary scions, who work closely with the award committee, are puzzled at the apparent omission.
Unusually for a ''most promising'' award, the George Devine is not based on a production of a writer's play. The award committee are reliant on writers, or their agents, submitting scripts for consideration, often before production - though given the award's high profile, they usually follow shortly after.
Christine Smith, Devine's PA, who has run the award since it was set up, stresses that its function remains as a seeker out of new writing before writers have really established themselves, a criterion that in recent years has excluded Patrick Marber - ''he's already well on track with plays produced at the National'' - East is East's Ayuk Khan Din, which transferred in double-quick time from the Royal Court's Upstairs Theatre to the West End via the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, and, because of the way in which he works, Edinburgh's Anthony Neilson: he only produces a script, as it were, after the fact - during rehearsal.
''I think it's a question of arithmetic,'' says one of the Court's literary team, noting Harrower's Knives and Hens was a strong runner-up last year. ''We're simply not seeing enough work.''
However, Caroline Hall, who has worked in Scotland at The Tron, The Lyceum, and Dun-dee Rep, and is now one of the Court's associate directors, thinks it is more a question of awareness. ''A lot of talent is slipping through the net,'' she concedes, but is unclear precisely why this is so. She agrees, though, that it's not a situation that should be allowed to continue. Something needs to be done.
In the meantime, McPherson's The Weir opened this week at the Duke of York's directed by Ian Rickson while both Disco Pigs and Sucking Dublin are scheduled for London productions in the near future, Disco Pigs at the Bush Theatre in September.
n Carole Woddis reviews Conor McPherson's award-winning play in tomorrow's Herald.
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