A number of friends have enquired about the list of Playwrights I’m studying the work of as part of my learning with the Nuffield Theatre Writers Group. I generally manage to recite the names of half a dozen or so before I get all confused so for those of you interested here’s my complete list (*American) in alphabetical order:

Edward Bond
John Byrne
Caryl Churchill
Sarah Daniels
Helen Edmundson
Peter Gill
David Harrower
Jonathan Harvey
Judith Johnson
Terry Johnson
Sarah Kane
Tony Kushner*
Bryony Lavery
Mick Mahoney
Patrick Marber
Conor McPherson
Meredith Oakes
Joe Penhall
Mark Ravenhill
Willy Russell
Sam Shephard*
Diana Son*
David Spencer
Heathcote Williams
Roy Williams

This is the list that our writing group leader and mentor John Burgess has given us (originally written for me on the back of the last page of my Kath and Kin script when I met John at the National back in October). It appears John has worked with/knows many of these playwrights as during our meetings we are often given interesting snippets of information and insights into one or other of these people and the plays they have written. Fascinating.

One interesting (for me anyway) thing I have noticed is that many of them are associated with a genre known as in-yer-face theatre of which my play The Man in the Middle of the Road is also as an example.

I’m certainly enjoying the reading.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 6:34 pm and is filed under Nuffield Theatre Writers Group. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.