Out of 26 submissions, the international jury for OISTAT has selected 3 Prize Winners and 14 additional entries are being included in the exhibition area at Sharjah Research Technology and Innovation Park from 18th to 25th October 2025. 

The Technical Invention Prize is awarded to the technicians working in theatre or any part of the entertainment industry who make gadgets, devices or basically simple and smart solutions for our kind of work: those clever ideas that are mostly realized by inexpensive means and materials. The apparatus might only be used in one particular theatre, company, travelling show, or sometimes just one country. This is an opportunity to share these inventions and clever devices with the international community.

The ABTT’s 2023 Virtual Idea’s Platform Winner David Ripley and The Counterweight Caddy  is the Sole UK representative being included in the Exhibition at World Stage Design 2025.

The Counterweight Caddy is a method of storing weights and addressing the Manual handling issues associated with work on the loading gallery. The ABTT Virtual Ideas platform is open to anyone and everyone with an idea and aims to recognise and help realise new ways of making theatre work. By its very nature, theatre is a dynamic working environment in which to invent and develop new and better ways of doing things whether this is in special effects, costume and wardrobe, wigs, make-up and hair, scenery, stage, sound, lighting, automation, audio-visual and any other discipline which makes live performance happen.