My Mother’s Funeral: The Show by Kelly Jones deals with complex and difficult issues related to the death of a loved one, grieving, class, funerals, and funeral poverty.

We’ve compiled a list of mental health charities and support groups below, for anyone who has been affected by the issues raised in the play.

If you need immediate support, or would just like someone to chat to, Samaritans offer a 24/7 helpline across the UK – call 116123 for free.

If you prefer to text, the UK also has a free 24/7 service: just text SHOUT to 85258.

We’re buzzing to announce a new production for 2025, which will perform at the Kiln Theatre in London from 3 April-10 May 2025. Shanghai Dolls by Amy Ng will be directed by our Joint Artistic Director Katie Posner.

We’re so happy to be partnering with the Kiln again, and it’s especially sweet to go on this journey with Amy Ng, whose writing we’ve admired since she was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting.

In Paines Plough’s 50th year of touring and championing new work, it means so much to be part of the Kiln and the Women’s Prize for Playwriting’s continued influence on the new writing ecosystem, and a joy to be part of Amit Sharma’s first season as artistic director of the Kiln, marking the beginning of a special new chapter in an already illustrious story.

Priority tickets for Kiln Card holders and Kiln Theatre donors are on sale today (13 September) at 12pm, with general on sale from next Monday (16 September) at 12pm.

Click here to find out more on the Kiln Theatre’s website.

TW // Please note that this blog contains descriptions of death and grief that might not be suitable for some readers.

Ahead of the premiere of My Mother’s Funeral: The Show, Charlotte Bennett (Joint Artistic Director of Paines Plough) wrote about death, why there needs to be more conversations about it, and how it led us to Kelly Jones’s new play.

Duncan Macmillan (writer of Lungs and Every Brilliant Thing) sent us a 50th birthday message about what Paines Plough means to him. Here’s what he wrote to us…

The first contemporary play I saw was produced by Paines Plough. Before that I assumed all playwrights were long dead.

When I started to write, it was Paines Plough who first responded to my rough, unsolicited scripts, the first to meet with me and give me feedback, the first to take me seriously as a writer. Paines Plough gave me a space to write, chances to experiment, opportunities to hear my work in front of audiences. When they invited me to become their Writer in Residence, it was the first time I’d ever been paid to be a writer.

They produced my play Lungs and developed and premiered Every Brilliant Thing. Neither of these plays would exist without Paines Plough.

Through this company I have encountered plays that have expanded my idea of what theatre can be, and met lifelong collaborators and friends.

As a truly national company, with an incredible record of discovering and nurturing some of our most important writers, reaching audiences and communities who are underrepresented and doing it all with passion, rigour and inclusivity, there’s no company quite like it.

Happy Birthday, Paines Plough!

We caught up with Kelly Jones (writer of My Mother’s Funeral: The Show) about her inspiration for the play, funeral poverty, and her experience working with Paines Plough.

How would you describe My Mother’s Funeral: The Show? 

My Mother’s Funeral: The Show is a darkly funny, theatrical play about the cost of dying and the class inequalities that exist both in the death industry and theatre. It explores the reality of losing a parent and the emotional cost of selling your biography to make art. The play is focused on the theme of dignity and the lengths we’ll go to provide for someone we love. I promise it’s funny! 

Can you discuss the development process, what inspired you to write this type of story?

I started writing the play during lockdown on the Mercury Theatre’s Playwrights group, tutored by the absolute legend, Kenny Emson. It was then selected by the Writers’ Guild as part of the New Play Commissions Scheme.

I submitted a rough first draft to Paines Plough in an open-submission window and was invited to a meeting with Charlotte, who told me Paines Plough were going to produce it!

Like most of my work, My Mother’s Funeral: The Show is inspired by something true; a relative passed away and we weren’t able to afford a funeral for her. I suppose, naively, I hadn’t realised that council funerals were still a thing.

I was brought up to believe that regardless of class, everyone ends up the same when we die – in the ground! That is not true.

Those who die with money can afford dignity and those without are made to feel ashamed by the very systems that should support us. If you have money, you are able to begin your grieving process in a healthy way. If you don’t, your grief has to go on hold until you work out how to afford it.

Funeral costs have risen by 126% in the last 20 years, with the average costing £4000 (excluding admin) – I wasn’t aware that once you ‘claim’ a body you are legally responsible for paying for all the costs. How are we in a world where people are having to choose between getting into debt or leaving their loved ones unclaimed? It’s Dickensian.

I wanted to write about it. It made me think about my relationship to writing biography. How as a young working-class lesbian writer I was encouraged to examine my trauma for ideas, without considering the impact on myself or an audience.

There’s a pressure when you’re from any kind of minority group to put your trauma on stage, and I wonder who it’s for. If you want to do it – great! But I used to do it because of money and because the only shows I was seeing all followed a similar pattern. Abigail in the play wants to write about gay space bugs, she should be allowed to do that, but the theatre won’t pay her for that, they will however pay for a show about her class trauma. She doesn’t have any other choice.

There is a reluctance to talk about the realities of death, what do you hope audiences will take away from the show?  

Death is the only certain thing that is going to happen to all of us- spoiler! We are so rubbish at talking about it. There’s a lot of shame and fear. Most people don’t know how to talk about it, and when we need to it’s too late. I hope this show opens a conversation about the cost of dying and makes people aware of the support available.

I hope it encourages people to talk to their loved ones about their funeral wishes and helps them prepare for it. During rehearsals the creative team and cast were talking about having a will-writing party!

There’s a moment in the play where Mum tells Abi she doesn’t want her to get into debt for a funeral, it is only one day. So many people get into thousands of pounds of debt for funerals and they don’t need to. Conversations like that could help. 

How are you getting on with development? 

We are about to start rehearsals! I am very excited. The cast and creative team are amazing. Our team is quite female led – I’m writing, Charlotte Bennett is directing, we’ve got Lauren Mooney who’s the dramaturg. Charlotte is incredible – she knows how to work with writers, which I think is a real skill. I was aware of her and her work before, and always wanted her to direct a play of mine, so it’s really amazing that that’s happening.

What are you most looking forward to bringing this show to the Fringe and on tour around the UK? 

On our tour I am looking forward to introducing my work to lots of new artists and audiences. The Mercury is where the play originated and has supported me and my work for a long time – bringing it to Essex audiences feels like coming home.

We’re delighted to announce that James Graham (writer of Dear England, Boys from the Blackstuff, Best of Enemies, Quiz, This House) is Paines Plough’s new Patron.

The prolific, Olivier-award winning playwright’s 2015 play The Angry Brigade was produced by Paines Plough. In this role as Patron, James will be a continued advocate for the company’s numerous strands of work, including our touring productions, their 50th birthday fundraising campaign, and contributing to our writer development programme, Tour the Writer. We can’t wait to continue working with James to develop our own work and to help to create a stronger ecology for new writing in the country.

James Graham said today:

“Paines Plough was utterly instrumental on my path to becoming a playwright. Not only in the opportunities it offered me early on but in the training, confidence, and the sense of community it gave me. It is the UK’s one true national new writing theatre company, and to become patron in its 50th year – particularly to champion its Tour The Writer programme, linking up with seven partner venues across the country – is a massive honour, and honestly, a responsibility too given the extremely difficult climate and ever-decreasing options for emerging artists. PP, and Charlotte and Katie and their team, are to be applauded over their unrelenting passion and commitment for writers and writing.”

It’s been 50 years since Paines Plough was established over a pint of Paines bitter at the Plough pub.

It’s 10 years since our magical spaceship theatre Roundabout was born.

Feels like a pretty epic, landmark year, doesn’t it?

So here it is: our celebration.

Just like the plays and the writers we have championed across our 50 years, we are hosting another Roundabout at Summerhall with a programme that blazes with laughter, fury, love and hope. They are voices you might never have heard before. They speak about the world in new ways. They hold a mirror to our relationships with ourselves and one another. We hope you love them just as much as we do.

ROUNDABOUT AT SUMMERHALL 2024 is:

• NATION by Sam Ward. Presented by YESYESNONO
• EVERY BRILLIANT THING by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe. Presented by Paines Plough and Second Half Productions.
• BELLRINGERS by Daisy Hall. Presented by Atticist, Ellie Keel Productions and Hampstead Theatre, in association with the Women’s Prize for Playwriting.
• MY MOTHER’S FUNERAL: THE SHOW by Kelly Jones. Presented by Paines Plough, Mercury Theatre, Belgrade Theatre, Landmark Theatres, and Royal & Derngate, Northampton.
• HOW I LEARNED TO SWIM by Somebody Jones. Presented by Prentice Productions in association with Brixton House.
• PLAYFIGHT by Julia Grogan. Presented by Grace Dickson Productions and Theatre Uncut.
• TONES: A HIP HOP OPERA by Gerel Falconer. Presented by Wound Up Theatre.
• VL by Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair. Presented by Francesca Moody Productions.
• MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY by Temi Wilkey. Presented by Temi Wilkey and Bobby Harding.
• REFUGEE! by Aisha Zia. Presented by 62 Gladstone Street, in association with Landmark Theatres and The Upsetters.
• LATER by Paines Plough and friends.

We have had many, many conversations about the landscape for new writing and new writers. A lot of them are difficult conversations, with quite a few harsh truths about the challenging environment for writers to flourish within the industry as it currently is.

But, in true Paines Plough style, we are holding on passionately to the dreams and ambitions of brilliant unheard writers that have guided us for half a century. This passion led us to Kelly Jones, a writer we met through our open submissions process in 2021. We were blown away by Kelly’s voice, which juggles so many meaty underrepresented issues with a deftness of touch, highlighting the problems of turning your loved ones into a product for cultural consumption and the serious financial inequalities and deeply embedded class issues surrounding grief.

The play will be joining our incredible Edinburgh programme, and meet audiences around the country in the Autumn, whilst also continuing with our Tour the Writer programme where we will mentor 68 writers in partnership with six theatre organisations around the country.

Whether you’re buying a ticket to one of the Roundabout shows, visiting us on tour, or donating to our 50 for 50 fundraising campaign, we warmly invite you to be part of this landmark year for Paines Plough; to celebrate the future of new writing, to laugh, cry and want to change the world with us. We want to be a part of a positive shift today and for the next 50 years.

This year, Paines Plough turns 50.

To celebrate, we announce a brand new show, and a new home in Coventry.

Since 1974 we’ve worked with over 500 playwrights and produced, commissioned or supported more than 400 plays.

We are turning 50 at a time where we remain one of the last subsidised new writing touring theatre companies in the UK. With programming priorities being forced to shift and costs increasing, the landscape for new writing is more challenging than it has ever been.

In this context, we’re proud to even be here to talk about a fiftieth year, and to continue to be an advocate, a voice and a thriving platform for writers and the future of new writing around the country.

This year will be about future-proofing our commitment to writers, who remain at the beating heart of everything we do. We can’t wait to find a new home at the glorious Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, where we will also preview our new show as a ‘see it first’ opportunity for Coventry audiences.

Our new show will be My Mother’s Funeral: The Show, a play by Kelly Jones, directed by Charlotte Bennett. Exploring the experience of being a benefit class artist and different approaches towards trauma stories, Jones’ new play asks us: if death is unifying, why are we not all afforded the same dignity? The show will preview at the Belgrade on 25-27 July, before opening at Roundabout at Edinburgh Fringe ahead of a UK tour. More info and tour dates to come…

We can’t wait to also welcome the return of last year’s runaway success Strategic Love Play at Soho Theatre, and continue with our Tour the Writer and writers-on-attachment activity; all of which supports new, bold, brilliant work to be created, just as the company has done in the last 50 years, and which we intend to do in the 50 years to come.

We will also launch our #50for50 fundraising campaign. #50for50 aims to raise £50,000 over the year to enable us to continue platforming, producing and touring ground-breaking new plays, and nurture the next generation of writers. You can donate to our fundraising campaign here: painesplough.com/50-for-50/ 

Thank you for being part of our journey, and we hope you’ll join us for the celebrations throughout the year.

My Mother’s Funeral: The Show
Written by Kelly Jones
A Paines Plough, Mercury Theatre, Belgrade Theatre, Landmark Theatres, and Royal & Derngate, Northampton co-production.
The commissioning of My Mother’s Funeral: The Show was enabled by a grant from the New Play Commission Scheme, a project set up by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, UK Theatre and the Independent Theatre Council, and funded by Arts Council England, the Theatre Development Trust and donations from actors, directors, playwrights and producers.

Intelligence by Sarah Grochala is today announced as the winning script for The Women’s Prize for Playwriting 2023.

The winning play was announced at an awards ceremony held at the iconic London Library in front of an audience of invited guests and leading lights within the UK theatre industry.

This year’s competition opened on 16 January 2023 and received over 1000 entries which were judged by the newly appointed Director of the National Theatre Indhu Rubasingham (Chair); journalist Samira Ahmed; playwrights April de Angelis and Chris Bush; actor Noma Dumezweni; literary agent Mel Kenyon; journalist and critic Anya Ryan; Head of Play Development at the National Theatre, Nina Steiger; and Guardian Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner.

Ellie Keel, Founder Director of The Women’s Prize for Playwriting, today said, “Sarah Grochala’s Intelligence is one of the plays I’ve been dreaming of finding since the idea for this prize first came to me. It is powerful, original, expansive, ambitious – all the things that audiences hope for and deserve when they book to see a new play. Sarah’s writing is witty and luminescent, vividly bringing to life her detailed research into the story of a fascinating and overlooked scientist and computing pioneer, Ada Lovelace, whose struggle to be recognised and fulfil her full potential sadly is, or has been, shared by so many women throughout history.

“It feels particularly poignant for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting to be awarding the prize to Intelligence in the building next door to Ada’s London home for many years, 12 St James’s Square. Thank you to all of the judges, readers, partners, sponsors and supporters who make this prize possible, and particularly to our Chair of Judges, Indhu Rubasingham, whose contribution to the Women’s Prize for Playwriting in our first three years has been immeasurably valuable.”

Katie Posner, Charlotte Bennett and Debo Adebayo, Joint Artistic Directors and Deputy Artistic Director of Paines Plough, added, “We are thrilled to be celebrating the finalists and the winner for the third year of this incredible prize, which not only champions outstanding talent, but continues to actively diversify our national theatrical landscape. We feel so lucky to have read these plays, and to consistently be bowled over by the talent, uniqueness and imagination of so many writers. At Paines Plough, we are so proud of these finalists, and thrilled to celebrate Intelligence by Sarah Grochala as this year’s winner. It blew us away with its boldness of storytelling and ambitious structure, which sees a central character cross centuries and discover what continues to inhibit female success. Sarah is an outstanding writer, and we are looking forward to working with her to produce and platform this play.”

INTELLIGENCE

by Sarah Grochala

When a Victorian female computing pioneer tries to make a career for herself as a serious scientist, her path is blocked by men in every direction.

She gets the chance to try again – in different times and places – but realises that there’s more at stake than her own thirst for fame…

London. 1840s. Ada Lovelace (inventor of computer software and AI pioneer) is determined to forge a career for herself as a serious scientist, but finds every path blocked by men. Even when they work with her, they’re against her. Ridiculed and desperate, she dies with all her ambitions unfulfilled. But this, it turns out, is only one of many ends. In an unexpected twist of fate, she finds herself repeatedly reincarnated and gets the chance to try for fame again, first as Grace Hopper (creator of COBOL) in 1940s America, and then as Steve Jobs in 1980s Silicon Valley. Eventually, confronted with the destruction of all her work by a shady tech billionaire, she realises that it’s the very nature of intelligence (artificial or not) that she should be fighting for.

Sarah Grochala is a neurodiverse Anglo-Polish playwright who writes female-led dramas exploring the darker aspects of life with humour and heart. She’s best-known for her Amnesty award-winning play S-27, but also writes audio episodes of Doctor Who, specialising in stories featuring alien invasions in historical settings, and robots – sometimes both.