Playwright Fellowship
Our Playwright Fellowship is awarded annually to a writer of exceptional promise. The Fellowship invites the writer to spend nine months on attachment to Paines Plough, where we design a bespoke programme to tailor the attachment to their specific needs, ambitions and circumstances.
The Fellow receives a bursary and a desk at Paines Plough, as well as mentorship from our Artistic Directors and Team PP.
We offer the writers new and interesting experiences to develop their craft, like participating in Sala Beckett’s annual Obrador d’estiu in Barcelona, immersing themselves in international work at the Dublin Theatre Festival and Edinburgh International Festival, and meeting some of their playwright heroes.
Playwright Bursary
In 2020, Paines Plough founded a new Playwright Bursary to support a playwright at the very start of their career with a six-month attachment to Paines Plough. The attachment is tailored to the individual’s specific needs and ambitions and includes financial, creative and dramaturgical support.
Our bursary recipient in 2021 was actor and writer Ric Renton, who used the bursary to write One Off, based on his experiences as a young adult in prison at HMP Durham.
On being awarded the bursary, Ric said:
For the first time in my life, receiving the bursary means I can write and there be no accumulative costs. See, the last time I got a decent portion of free time to write was in prison, which I don’t advise to even the most driven of writers. Unless they want authentic content, in that case, it’s a goldmine.
This bursary will afford me to really focus on just writing and I can’t tell you what that means to me, I’m smiling just writing this. Not many men I know with my background are in this position and I’m so, so thankful. These are life changing opportunities for me, really. The bursary is just that, an opportunity to change, better, enrich, and develop my life in a direction I never ever thought possible.’
We will post any upcoming opportunities connected to the next Paines Plough Playwright bursary here.
