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. We design a bespoke programme for each individual 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 try to offer them new and interesting experiences like participating in the annual Obrador d’estiu in Barcelona, seeing international work at the Dublin Theatre Festival and Edinburgh International Festival and meeting 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 current playwright bursary recipient is Ric Renton. Ric is an actor and writer. He plans to use the bursary to write a new play inspired by his own experience of being an inmate in Durham Prison and striking up an unlikely friendship with a night guard.
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.’
You can read more about Ric here, and we will post any upcoming opportunities connected to the next Paines Plough Playwright bursary here.
First Commissions; A WoLab project in association with Paines Plough
The project supports three never before commissioned writers to receive their first commission to originate and realise a fresh idea for a new play. Each writer receives £1500 a commission to cover the development of their idea over three weeks. They are also paired with a dramaturg and an industry mentor, and will access professional development workshops facilitated by WoLab and Paines Plough, to contribute further to the development of their idea and their writing/artist practice.
Our three supported writers are:
AZARA
Rachel Main
Alice Straker
This project is funded by Arts Council England.
