A day-long celebration of writers, and to explore the future of new writing. 

Join Paines Plough and a host of writers and industry leaders at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry for a packed day of workshops, networking opportunities, panel discussion and readings for writers and theatre-makers.

This is a culmination of Tour the Writer, a multi-year writer development programme led by Paines Plough alongside seven theatre organisations across the country, with a mission to develop and support the writing networks in their area.

There will be events running throughout the day at the Belgrade:

• A Key-note Opening, Charlotte Bennett in conversation with playwright Simon Stephens
• Design and Dramaturgy workshops by award-winning designers, Milla Clarke and Rosie Elnile
• Turning Text into Performance workshops, delivered by Katie Posner and dramaturg/editor Gurnesha Bola
• 2 scratch performances from the 14 writers on the Tour the Writer programme
• A panel discussion about the future of new writing and touring, with Corey Campbell (Belgrade Theatre), Madeleine Kludje (Birmingham Rep), Somebody Jones (writer), Gillian Greer (Royal Court), Pooja Ghai (Tamasha) and Ben Lyon-Ross (Landmark Theatres), chaired by Katie Posner.
• A morning networking session with members of the Paines Plough team, with Corey Weekes, Sam Ward (YESYESNONO Productions), and Magdalen Gorringe (Arts Council England). Plus, an afternoon networking mixer with fellow writers and local companies, as well as focused one-to-one Arts Council sessions with Magdalen.

As part of the day, 14 writers will have rehearsed extracts of the scripts performed, all of which were developed on the programme: Dan Loops & Jan Ruppe (from Bradford), Emma Bernard & Ben SantaMaria (from Colchester), Sara Amanda & Matthew Gabrielli (from Coventry), Sophia Atcha & Rachel Price (from Cumbria), Jessy Roberts & Emily Swettenham (from Peterborough), Kayleigh Mai Hinsley & Selina Keedwell (from North Devon), and Jon Nash & Jane Spurr (from Plymouth). The extracts will be directed by Katie Posner, Jay Zorenti-Nakhid, and Josh Parr.

Tour the Writer has been delivered by a cohort of organisations around the country: 

• Paines Plough 
• Belgrade Theatre, Coventry 
• Bradford 2025 & The Upsetters, Bradford 
• Landmark Theatres (North Devon and Peterborough) 
• Mercury Theatre Colchester 
• Theatre by the Lake in Cumbria 
• Theatre Royal Plymouth 

Alongside a host of playwrights, directors, facilitators and dramaturgs, we have worked with the writers on the programme to develop their scripts, as well as offered one-to-one support and masterclasses with a wider nationwide network of 370 writers since the first year of the programme.

How to book:

The main ticket is the Open Spaces ticket. This ticket permits you access to the Welcome Conversation (10.30-11.30), both Scratch Performances (2.15-3.30 and 5.45-7.15), the closing Industry Panel discussion (7.45pm), as well as the surgery and networking sessions throughout the day.

Once you have added the Open Spaces ticket to your basket, you will be given the option to book the Dramaturgy of Design and the Turning Text into Performance workshops for an additional £3 for each workshop.

Please note that the workshops are repeated, so please do not book for both sessions. This means you can book for one of the workshops at 11.45am, and the other at 3.45pm.

Borders are shut. The country is underpopulated. Citizens are required to have children.

Nia, a prominent journalist, has always sat on the fence about these regulations despite it impacting her and her husband’s lives. As she seeks to escape from the country and tell the story of what’s happening in a now isolated nation, she is forced to interrogate the cost of what she’s leaving behind.

What does it mean to have a significant part of your life forced upon you?

A dystopian drama that explores love, parenthood, and free will.

Part of the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama’s annual NEW Festival.

Set in an unnamed city from which voices and images spring, Crave is a meditation on the nature of craving, and more specifically, the nature of loss.

The play in its earliest form was written under a pseudonym Marie Kelvedon, as part of Paines Plough’s first ‘Wild Lunch’ season of script-in-hand performances at the Bridewell Theatre in 1997.

This anonymity enabled Sarah to make a radical departure in the form, content and style of her writing, and to gauge the response of an audience unburdened by preconceptions based on the extreme reactions to her past work, including Blasted in 1995.

Having pioneered a new theatre where brutality and action express an emotional narrative, in Crave she deployed language like music. Rhythm and orchestration were as vital as content to understand and respond to the play.

The result was dark, compassionate and exhilarating, and was commissioned immediately by Paines Plough.

A bumper celebration of new writing and writers, to celebrate Paines Plough’s 50th birthday and raise funds to secure our future.

The evening featured an exclusive new piece entitled ‘The Next 50’, written by our patron James Graham and performed by Monica Dolan.

Followed by extracts from some of Paines Plough’s seminal productions, performed by guest stars:

• Crave by Sarah Kane – featuring Thomas Coombes, Alfred Enoch, Siobhan McSweeney and Rebekah Murrell directed by the play’s original director Vicky Featherstone.
• After the End by Dennis Kelly – performed by TV royalty, Meg Bellamy (Princess Kate in The Crown) and Hugh Skinner (Prince William in The Windsors), directed by Matthew Dunster.
• Love, Love, Love by Mike Bartlett – performed by Lesley Sharp, Iain Glen and Jessie Cave, directed by Charlotte Bennett.
• Sea Wall by Simon Stephens – performed by Tom Sturridge (The Sandman), who received a Tony nomination for his performance in the Broadway production of Sea Wall in 2019, directed by Charlotte Bennett.
• Hungry by Chris Bush – featuring Heather Agyepong (Shifters; The Power) and Sophie Melville (Cowbois; The Way), directed by Katie Posner.
• A filmed segment with Olivier Award-winner Amy Trigg, who will record a scene from Reasons You Should(n’t) Love Me (winner of the Women’s Prize for Playwriting in 2021), in the venue where it all began for us as a company 50 years ago: the Plough pub in Bolnhurst, Bedford.
• Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz by Nathan Queeley-Dennis – performed by Kola Bokinni (Ted Lasso), directed by Katie Posner.
• Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe.

Appearances will also include Indhu Rubasingham (Director Designate of the National Theatre), and playwrights James Graham, Roy Williams, Mark Ravenhill and Ryan Calais Cameron.

This event is part of Paines Plough’s 50 for 50 Campaign which aims to raise £50,000 to support its work at at time when new writing is under threat. There are so many stories in danger of never being heard, and we want to make sure we can spend the next 50 years finding them.

The true story of a cultural martyr and a cultural oppressor.

When two penniless actresses meet in Shanghai at auditions for Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, they quickly become inseparable. But as political upheaval rips through China, their tumultuous friendship will alter not only the course of their lives, but the course of history. One will become China’s first female director. The other, the architect of the Cultural Revolution.

Amy Ng’s newest play looks at the untold story of two of the most influential women in Chinese history – Madame Mao and Sun Weishi – and how the personal truly is political.