Success Stories

Lee Mattinson

Lee has had work produced at York Theatre Royal, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Southwark Playhouse, Zoo Southside (Edinburgh Fringe) and New Writing North. His play Me And Cilla was produced at Live Theatre and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Fiona Evans

Won a Fringe First with Scarborough (2007) which subsequently transferred to The Royal Court. Geoff Dead: Disco For Sale (2008) was nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Best Play 2009. She has also written for Casualty, Holby City and Eastenders.

Karen Laws

Won a Fellows in the Arts Foundation Award in 2006, and has subsequently been part of the BBC Academy Programme writing for Eastenders, Casualty, Doctors and Holby City as well as Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please. She also co-wrote Beware The Kids a radio play for Radio 3.

Helen Schell

I found the ‘Introduction to Playwriting’ course very useful, not only because it improved my creative writing skills, and encouraged me to continue, but it has also been useful as regards writing documents such as applications, reports and evaluations in my career as a professional artist. The experience encouraged me to examine how I write and present documents given that we have to communicate information in an engaging manner for all recipients.

Fiona Ritchie Walker

I signed up for the Live Theatre playwriting course because I'd recently completed an MA in Writing Poetry and felt it was time to do some other writing for fun. The course seemed the right level and I really enjoyed it, but was soon back writing poetry. Then I saw that the Scottish Community Drama Association was running a one-act playwriting competition and I decided to use some of the skills and knowledge gained on the course. A few months later I learned my play was through to the final and would be performed at Livingston in Scotland where it came third. Seems like the skills that I learned at Live aren't getting too rusty after all.

Kev Hilton

The Introduction to Playwriting was for me an essential step towards playwriting, enabling me by the end of the course to successfully submit a play in application to join a Writers Group, the next step on. The creative exercises and discussions all fed my increasing confidence as insights grew about effective writing for theatre. This course also enabled me to get a deeper understanding of how to develop my own style and themes, taking me from writing 10 minute plays to ones which last more than a hour, and hopefully entertain and enlighten my future audiences.’

Wajid Hussain

The introduction to Playwriting course worked well for me. The flexibility of the course enabled me to study in the evenings after work in short enough sessions so as not to burden my wife for too long with the childcare! It was well structured and the guys leading it were good in getting us to talk and letting ideas flow. The other participants were diverse in experience, age, backgrounds etc so discussions and perspectives were really interesting. I have continued to write and edit my work and do hope that my writing will reach a standard to grace the stage soon. Overall though it has helped me as a writer and informed me that it is something I would like to develop further.