Emerging writers and directors have the opportunity to get onto a year-long development and mentoring programme organised by Birmingham REP.
REP Foundry 2015 will invest in and support six writers, six directors and six theatre-makers from across the West Midlands. It will be the third year that the theatre has run the scheme initiated by artistic director Roxana Silbert.
REP Foundry is a professional artist development programme that supports “the most exciting new generation of theatre artists in the region”.
In 2015 three former Foundry artists will première their plays in the REP’s spring season: Stephanie Ridings with Unknown Male, Hannah Graham’s Collidoscope and Selina Thompson's Chewing The Fat.
REP Foundry, which supported 36 artists in its first two years, can boast a number of other successes. Jo Newman is resident assistant director as part of the Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme at Salisbury Playhouse, playwright Joe White is the Channel 4 playwright in residence at Shropshire-based Pentabus Theatre and writer/performer Francesca Millican-Slater has toured her one-woman show The Forensics of a Flat.
The scheme offers professional support and expertise from theatre professionals at the REP as well as an opportunity to try out new work in front of an audience in an informal atmosphere that invites feedback directly from an audience.
Associate director Tessa Walker said, “we’re now keen to diversify and widen the reach of the scheme by attracting in particular directors at a much earlier stage in their career, proactively recruiting from less advantaged education, demographic and ethnic backgrounds. With this in mind we’ve created an Introduction to Directing strand specifically aimed at those people.”
The deadline for applications for REP Foundry 2015 is 6PM on Monday 9 March. Further details are available at the Birmingham REP web site.