By Kenneth Jones
02 Nov 2009

The annual Empty Space Peter Brook Awards, this year marking their 20th anniversary, will be presented Nov. 3 in a ceremony at the National Theatre Studio in London. Famed director Brook will attend.

There are four awards in all. The main Empty Space Peter Brook Award is awarded for a body of work and in recognition of pioneering concepts and innovations (in the spirit of Peter Brook) achieved by companies that perform in smaller theatre venues and receive little or no public funding.

This year, the nominees comprise Chichester's studio Minerva Theatre; BAC; Soho Theatre; The Bush Theatre; Glasgow's The Arches; and Forest Fringe, founded at the Edinburgh Fringe and offering a venue that does not charge rental to its participating companies or admission prices to its audiences.

Each nominee receives £350, with £2000 going to the winner.

The Dan Crawford Pub Theatre Award is made to a pub theatre that has made a mark, named in honor of the late founder of Britain's first pub theatre, the King's Head, which was founded in 1970. No nominations are made; only a winner is announced.

The two awards are judged by a panel that comprises critics Dominic Cavendish (Daily Telegraph), Lyn Gardner (Guardian), Fiona Mountford (Evening Standard), Sam Marlowe (The Times) and Mark Shenton (Playbill.com's London correspondent and Sunday Express).

There are two further awards. Nominations for the Mark Marvin Rent Subsidy Award, to help fund the run of a production, are James Graham's Win or Lose (at the Finborough Theatre), My Real War, adapted by Tricia Thorns (at Trafalgar Studios 2) and Burnt UP Love and Crazy Love (at the Oval House). Nominations for the Peter Brook/Equity Ensemble Award are to the team at the Arcola for their new opera season Grimeborn, to team of the Little Angel for the Suspense Festival of Puppetry, and to the teams behind the companies Fuel and Filter for their next season's programmes. These awards are judged by producers Thelma Holt and Peter Wilson and the National Theatre's Purni Morrell.

The awards were founded and are run by Blanche Marvin.