LONDON -- Two Olivier awards, an Obie and a Pulitzer nom -- an eye-widening haul by any standard. It's even more impressive when you know all those were garnered in the last decade by playwrights who debuted in the Royal Court's Young Writers Festival, the latest of which bowed Jan. 28.
That awards list alone should silence cynics imagining the program to be merely about paying lip service to modish notions of access and education. Better yet, since its first outing in 1975, the festival -- now playing every other year -- has not just presented plays, it also has launched careers.
U.S. scribe Christopher Shinn, whose 2006 drama "Dying City" played both the Court and Lincoln Center and whose most recent "Now or Later" drew praise from Prime Minister Gordon Brown, had the premiere of his adroit first play, "Four," at the festival in 1998.
Andrea Dunbar ("Rita, Sue and Bob Too"), Michael Wynne ("My Summer of Love") and Robin French (co-writer with Kieron Quirke of the ABC Family forthcoming sitcom "Roommates" and the ITV drama "Trinity") all began their professional work here.
Alongside public readings, the 2009 festival presents three-week runs of two full-scale productions.
Alia Bano's "Shades" is a single-girl-looking-for-Mr. Right play set in the Muslim community, that, in a playful way, challenges orthodoxies. Molly Davies' "A Miracle" features an uncertain young mother but broadens into a three-generation tale in the Norfolk countryside.
The festival now operates as the culmination of a two-year Writers' Program. Court a.d. Dominic Cooke is proud of its continuing track record.
"It began as a more generally participatory outreach scheme in what was then the Young People's Theater," says Cooke. "We've made it much more focused around young writers whose work we actively want to produce."
That's not just talk. Mike Bartlett wrote "My Child," one of the offerings Cooke programmed in the main house. Polly Stenham's first play, "That Face," was on the program when she was just 19 and has since nabbed a handful of awards and a West End transfer.
Ola Animashawun, who ran the program for a decade, contrasts its steady writer development with high-risk, sudden-death TV talent shows.
"Unlike instant fame shows, there's a genuine process here," he explains.
A marketing campaign is set up in tandem with partnered theaters around the U.K. to make the process as national as possible. Anyone aged between 13 and 25 interested in writing plays can apply.
Around 300 excerpts are submitted, with the most interesting voices encouraged to join.
A longlist of 20 are taken individually through progressive drafts, and the shortlisted plays are taken into the Court's weekly script meetings, chaired by Cooke, in which the theater's entire program is chosen. Final contenders are workshopped ahead of the closing selection.
"At the launch of this year's festival, the writers were amazed at the level of press attention," says Animashawun. "We guide them through it and act as mentors, especially with things like reviews and handling agents who come to recruit talent."
All of which happened to Olivier winner Simon Stephens.
"I'd written plays before as a student," explains Stephens. "They were really quite bad. But I sent in 'Bluebird' when I was training as a schoolteacher after working for seven years in bars and cafes."
A call from the Court one summer afternoon in 1988 led to that play's selection. That debut led to a commission for his next play, and he was snapped up by Mel Kenyon, doyenne of literary agents. Within 14 months of the call, Stephens had a yearlong residency at the Court, had quit teaching and was a professional playwright.
Time will tell if this year's as-yet-unknown talent is about to have a similar trajectory.
Contact David Benedict at
benedictdavid@mac.com