This year the Bush Theatre in Shepherd’s Bush celebrates 50 years of international renown as the UK home of new theatre writing having discovered such names as Jonathan Harvey, Cush Jumbo, James Graham, Jack Thorne, Arinzé Kene, Victoria Wood, and Julie Walters.
Applications open today for the theatre’s West London Playwrights’ Group, a free introductory course for first-time playwrights, open to anyone over the age of 18 living in west London. The Bush is looking for eight people who are passionate about writing a play. Over the course of nine weekly classes, Ifrah Ismail and the theatre’s artistic team will take writers through the fundamentals of playwriting and support them in writing a play. This opportunity is specifically intended for those who have received no formal training before, and applicants do not even have to have experience of writing a full play.
The Bush Theatre’s Literary Manager, Deirdre O’Halloran said ‘The opening of the application process is always one of the highlights of our year. There are a lot of talented writers in our area and discovering and developing them is a big part of our commitment to new writing. It will be fascinating to see whether our recent history has encouraged more people to try playwriting for the first time and what topics they chose to cover.’
Applicants should complete the form on the theatre’s website at bushtheatre.co.uk and need to be available on nine Saturday mornings between 12 February - 7 May. The training sessions will take place at the Bush Theatre unless Covid restrictions make online meetings necessary. The deadline for applications is 6 pm on 26 January.
