Four playwrights with different career paths and writing styles will be on the panel for the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s first regional Meet the Playwrights event at Derby Theatre.
Amelia Bullmore, Zodwa Nyoni, Amanda Whittington and Nick Wood will discuss today’s theatre landscape, the trials and triumphs of crafting work for the stage, the commissioning process and working with directors and producers. A question-and-answer session with the audience will follow.
Amelia Bullmore is an actor and writer. Her first play Mammals opened at London’s Bush Theatre in 2006 and went on a national tour the following year. Her adaptation of Ibsen’s Ghosts had a sell-out run at the Gate in 2007. Her play Di and Viv and Rose was produced at Hampstead Theatre in both 2013 and 2015.
Zodwa Nyoni is a playwright and poet. She was the 2014 writer-in-residence at West Yorkshire Playhouse via the Channel 4 playwrights scheme.
Nottingham-born Amanda Whittington has written more than 30 plays for theatre and radio. Her work is widely performed across the UK, with Be My Baby, performed at Derby Theatre in 2011, a GCSE and A-level text in English literature and theatre studies.
In 2016 her play Kiss Me Quickstep had its première at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme and two years before that her adaptation of Susie Boyt’s My Judy Garland Life was performed at Nottingham Playhouse.
Nottingham-based Nick Wood was an actor, freelance journalist and a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. His plays have been translated into several languages and have been performed in France, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, USA, Canada, Albania, Croatia, Serbia, Poland, Denmark, Montenegro, Russia, Switzerland and South Korea.
Meet the Playwrights, presented by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain in association with Derby Theatre and its professional development programme In Good Company, will be held on Tuesday 20 February.