Each year the JMK Trust provides up to 20 talented young directors with awards, guidance and development opportunities. We present the annual The James Menzies-Kitchin Young Director’s Award (The JMK Award) to one outstanding candidate.

The JMK Award is the single most sought-after prize for outstanding young theatre directors. Great directors acknowledge that you learn to direct by directing – but opportunities to do so are extremely scarce. The JMK Award allows participants to do exactly that. For many, winning this award is the breakthrough moment in their directing career. Increasingly, simply taking part in the Trust’s unique selection process has itself given a powerful impetus to the best theatre practitioners of the future.

The winner in 2011 was Cathal Cleary and his winning production of Disco Pigs ran at the Young Vic from 2nd – 28th September.

“Cathal Cleary, the director, won this year’s JMK Award. You can see — from his mastery of stagecraft, from the way he siphons the energy from his talented cast of Charlie Murphy and Rory Fleck-Byrne — that he has every chance of following such JMK winners as Thea Sharrock and Bijan Sheibani  to the top table.” The Times

A second award, supported by The Ian Ritchie Foundation, provides a smaller cash sum to be used to fund either a production or to enable further research to a selection of runner-up candidates.

Since 1998 the JMK Trust has discovered and nurtured a new generation of exciting, visionary young directors whose work and influence can be seen throughout the British theatre industry.