There are just a few days left to submit your play to 37 Plays, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) search for the UK’s best new writing talent to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio.
Led by the RSC and Associate Regional Theatres, 37 Plays is open to anyone in the UK who wants to submit a play. You have until 31 Jan to enter your play via the 37 Plays website. There is no fee to enter, and the play should be predominantly in English and reflect our world. The 37 selected plays will be announced in the spring and will be performed script-in-hand across the UK and online in the autumn.
As an RSC partner theatre, Norwich Theatre hosted several workshops and programmes to support budding playwrights in our region, improve their scriptwriting skills, share their writing, and gain feedback.
Elspeth Hunter, Creative Engagement Project Manager at Norwich Theatre, said: “It was great to see so many people get involved. We aimed to create a space where participants could get creative, develop skills and connect with others through storytelling. Feedback from all the workshops was positive and hopefully inspired those involved to pursue writing and sharing their work with others.”
After consultation with local charities, The Benjamin Foundation and Caring Together Norwich Theatre delivered Young Carers Create!, a series of six workshops for young carers aged 12 – 17 that saw the group develop their script based on their life experiences. The play the group has written entitled They Were The Happiness I Needed: Young Carers Vs Humanity will be submitted to the RSC’s 37 Plays.
Norwich Theatre Playhouse played host to The Scriptwriters Series, free workshops that invited participants to learn from the expertise of local and national playwrights Molly Naylor, James McDermott, Archie Maddocks, and CJ Lloyd Webley.
37 Plays: Access First was created after it was identified that people with visual impairments are hesitant to engage with the theatre. In partnership with Vision Norfolk, the workshops were participant-led and included a masterclass on the creative use of audio description within the scriptwriting process.
To coincide with our year-long Creative Matters series on climate stories, Norwich Theatre, in partnership with UEA, recently hosted 37 Plays: Climate Writing. Creative writing workshops, climate talks, and in-situ writing sessions guide participants through writing their own climate-focused scripts.
Comment from a participant in The Scriptwriter Series:
“The leaders were so encouraging, and it was so nice to meet them and recognise them as people who struggle with writing as much as everyone else. It’s given me a lot of motivation to keep writing.”
Comment from an Access First Participant:
“I appreciated being shown new ways to develop my skills as a storyteller – ways that are true to my own style and skills but which I hadn’t considered before. I also loved the way we quickly became a cohesive working group, affirming one another.”
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