The Faber New Play Award, which offers publication to coincide with the premiere, and a prize of £5,000, was granted to the best play written by an unpublished playwright under the WGGB New Play Commission Scheme. The scheme was a response to the decline in new theatre commissions during the Covid-19 pandemic, and offered eighteen commissions for playwrights across England in 2022. Under the scheme, And The Earth Opened Up Under Her has been commissioned by Pilot Theatre, York.
The judges for the Faber New Play Award were playwrights Dipo Baruwa-Etti and Beth Steel; dramaturg and translator Chris Campbell; and, at Faber, Lily Levinson and Dinah Wood.