There were prizes for NHB-published plays at the Offies Awards this week (Sunday 25 February), with no fewer than seven of our plays taking home silverware, two of them in the OffFest Theatre Festival Awards.

James Fritz's The Flea won Best Director for Jay Miller as well as Best Costume Design (by Lambdog1066).

Tom Powell's The Silence and the Noise won Best Online Production.

Lauryn Redding won Best Lead Performance in a Musical for her performance in her own musical, Bloody Elle.

Samuel Barnett won Best Solo Performance in a Play for his performance in Marcelo Dos Santos's Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen.

Sophie Swithinbank's play Bacon won Best Lighting Design (by Ryan Joseph Stafford).

At the OffFest Theatre Festival Awards, Ed Edwards won the New Writing Award for his play England & Son, while Elisabeth Lewerenz won the Vault Festival Award for How We Begin.

Many congratulations to all our winners!

Nick Hern Books is proud to be a participant in Tonic Changemakers, a membership programme run by Tonic for people doing Equality, Diversity and Inclusion work in the arts and cultural sector.

Tonic Changemakers is a community of likeminded people who are committed to driving EDI-related change in the arts and cultural sector. It is also a first-of-its-kind hub of training, support and professional development opportunities designed specifically for EDI changemakers. All of it is based on the insights from Tonic's 10+ years of ground-breaking work with hundreds of arts organisations, supporting them to achieve tangible, long-lasting EDI-related change.

Nick Hern Books has worked closely with Tonic since publishing 100 Great Plays for Women, by the company's founder Lucy Kerbel, in 2013. The book was the culmination of a project by Tonic (then Tonic Theatre) and the National Theatre Studio. Tonic Theatre was founded by Kerbel in 2011 to support the theatre industry in achieving greater gender equality in its workforces and repertoires.

In 2017, Nick Hern Books published Kerbel's subsequent book, All Change Please: A Practical Guide to Achieving Gender Equality in Theatre. Rufus Norris, Director of the National Theatre, said: 'Lucy Kerbel's work has become increasingly pivotal in helping the entire industry raise its game. This illuminating book answers the cynic, informs the impartial, converts the supporter into an activist and equips them all; not in a rallying cry of anger-fuelled idealism, but in a calm, pragmatic and clear-eyed way.'

Nick Hern Books also publishes the Platform series of plays in association with Tonic, offering big-cast plays with predominantly or all-female casts, written specifically for school, college and youth-theatre groups. The series was awarded Outstanding Drama Initiative at the Music and Drama Education Awards 2021.

There is more about Tonic Changemakers on Tonic's website here.