East Midlands playwright, screenwriter and actor Laura Turner has become an associate artist at Nottingham Playhouse.
Associate artists “help to shape the Nottingham Playhouse programme by providing a sounding board for the artistic team, reading scripts and watching productions, meeting freelance theatre-makers and discussing artistic policy”.
Turner’s work is focussed on untold stories from a female perspective and explores “what it means to be a strong woman, using genre as a lens for storytelling”.
She has had more than 50 plays produced nationally and internationally, working with theatres including Hull Truck, the Almeida and Durham Gala. She runs her own Midlands-based company Fury Theatre, exploring “female stories told with fire”.
She commented, “I can’t wait to start working with the artistic team, meeting local artists and companies and supporting their activities across the region while scaling up my own practice as a writer, actor and producer to more ambitious theatrical spaces and stories.”
Adam Penford, the Playhouse’s artistic director, said, “we received many impressive applications from our open callout for a new associate artist but Laura’s passion for developing other theatre-makers alongside a clear sense of how the opportunity will help develop her own artistic skills shone through.”
Previous associate artists at Nottingham Playhouse include playwrights James Graham and Amanda Whittington, director Matthew Xia and Sarah Kolawole, who is a playwright, spoken word artist and performance poet.