Caring about closed doors
It’s a bumper blog post this month.
In April 2025, Script East Midlands hosted a panel discussion with industry leaders from the world of theatre. Taking place at Writing East Midlands’ Annual Writer Conference at the University of Lincoln, guest speakers were Craig Gilbert (an Associate Director and company dramaturg at Donmar Warehouse, London), Mufaro Makubika (award-winning Nottingham-based playwright), Laura Turner (Lincolnshire-based playwright and Literary Associate at Nottingham Playhouse) and Jayne Williams (writer and participation director of Nottingham-based theatre company New Perspectives).
Compered by me, below is an edited transcript of the discussion, which covered everything from career-building as a playwright, strategizing, ambition and more. Enjoy!
Photo by Lamar Francois for Writing East Midlands
HUGH: As people who receive new plays in your jobs, what do you look for in a script?
JAYNE: I'm looking for connectivity, something that I could see myself in. But also I'm looking for something that's going to teach me, something new and something that might challenge the way I think. Something that gets me into the world really quickly, something where stuff happens, something that I can have a reaction and a response to. If I read a script in one day, then I know it's a cracker, because my brain's been able to retain the information that I'm gaining.
CRAIG: Something that that feels alive, something that has music and fire. I love it when I read a play, and I genuinely want to know what happens next. If you can do that, that's a magic trick. So few writers do that.
HUGH: Mufaro and Laura, coming at it more from a playwright's perspective, you've written a play, where do you go or what do you do next?
MUFARO: I think it's about plugging yourself into the ecology of the theatre. Is it about the email? Is it about sending a script through? Do they have a program? It's about getting to know the people in the buildings and then trying to form some sort of relationship so that you can start to have a conversation.
LAURA: I work as a playwright, but also as a screenwriter, and one of the things I love about the theatre industry is that you can be proactive within it. Do the research, find the people who might be your collaborators, who have worked on similar projects or expressed interest in similar areas that align with your kind of core values as an artist.
MUFARO: I used to work in the bar at Nottingham Playhouse, and I said to Giles (Croft, then Artistic Director). I'm like, ‘Giles, I've got this script. Do you want a coffee with that?’ I know it sounds like it's frivolous, but it's about just trying to get into those spaces any way you can.
LAURA: But thinking about your question, not only practically but creatively, I think every play you write is an opportunity to kind of reflect and analyse yourself and who you are as a writer, and kind of learn lessons from it. Because I remember when I was first starting out, and everyone would ask me what my voice was as a writer. And I used to dread the question. But now, in my role as Associate Artist at Nottingham Playhouse, I read a lot of plays, and I find myself asking versions of that question to other writers. And I know how tricky it can be, but actually, all it really is asking you is, what are you interested in? What are you passionate about, and what do you want to say?
HUGH: Laura and Mufaro, do you write with a particular audience in mind or with a particular theatre in mind? Are you thinking about the audience, or are you thinking in terms of strategy?
LAURA: I do think writers have to be more strategic today, with the changes to the industry and economy. We have to be smart about the projects that we're pitching in certain places and to certain people, but I never let that come in too early in the process. First you have to give yourself space to feel out the idea and figure out what it is.
MUFARO: For me, it's a practicality thing. I’m thinking, ‘Is this play for a studio space? Is it a small scale show, medium scale, what type of space would I see the show?’ And if location is integral to the play itself, like Nottingham was for my play Shebeen, then there's a clear resonance a specific theatre; in that case Nottingham Playhouse.
LAURA: The more kind of savvy you can be about that kind of stuff as a writer, the more you're going to get yourself in the right conversations for the right project at the right time. So I do think a lot now about where I'm pitching different projects, and have several projects on the go at the same, which I'll be pitching in all different areas and walks of the industry.
CRAIG: You don't want strategy to be in too early in the process, because then it’s like you're attempting to game the system, thinking ‘If I write a monologue’, or, ‘If I write a play about XYZ, it may get on at this particular theatre’, etc.’ Let your idea flower to the point of fruition, by that, I mean to the point of a draft, and then begin to think strategically about where this specific thing that has been wrought from my imagination. Where might this best sit?
JAYNE: It's interesting, though, if you ever read all the titles of the plays shortlisted for competitions. The Bruntwood Prize in 2022, it was all about women. Apparently, the ones that are coming through competitions now are all about AI. So there's lots of people on social media saying, ‘Please don't write anything about AI anymore’, because everyone's done it and everyone hates it. It's boring.
MUFARO: I also get nervous hearing about writers being “strategic”, because it might blunt you. It might freeze you, because you're thinking about strategy strategy strategy, when what you should be doing is writing.
LAURA: It’s really important to follow the stories you are excited about, where you feel like you have something to say. When I first started, I was very much led by the heart, which I still am.
JAYNE: As a writer myself, I never write for an artistic community. I write for people. So I'm often writing something that's not even thinking about what the artistic community is. I don't write for these sort of spaces. I write for community centres. As a working class person, I often think the way I tell a story is just the way I tell a story, but to somebody else, it's very different because of the experiences that I've had.
HUGH: Earlier this year, the Royal Court’s David Byrne said “Artists worry about putting on work that doesn’t feel instantly palatable to the loudest voices in the artistic community. It’s increasingly rare to see work that dares to air a difficult point of view. ” Have you seen this yourself? A fear of risk-taking in playwriting? Writers holding back?
JAYNE: I often find with the plays that we receive at New Perspectives, that writers preamble, setting up the reason for them wanting to say this thing, and often their play doesn’t actually start until act two. And I always think, ‘Start it where THIS happens.’ This could be crushing feedback for a writer, but it's often because they've not actually told the story that they want to tell. But I care about the writers, I care about their development first and foremost. So I really want them to tell the story that they're trying to tell. So in my job it's just about reading their play and helping them to do that.
HUGH: It was put to me last year by an Artistic Director, that the difference between East Midlands-based playwrights and London-based playwrights was ambition; the hustle. Do you agree?
CRAIG: I wouldn’t say choosing to live elsewhere outside of London indicates a lack of ambition. You don't have to live in the metropolis, and you don’t have to write about the metropolis. You don't have to write about metropolitan concerns. There is a great history, throughout the world, of people writing about different things.
LAURA: I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Lincolnshire, and spent the whole of my teenage years just desperate to get away, so moved to London as quickly as I could. I kind of felt a tension between myself and this place, because I wanted to pursue a career in the arts, and there weren't lots of opportunities that time in Lincolnshire. But the irony was that by going somewhere else, what I really realized was how much I missed home, and I realized that through my writing. All of my own original writing for plays and films was all set where I grew up and was all to do with the things that I'd always actually been interested in, but never kind of stopped and acknowledged, like, weird folk stories from Lincolnshire. There was an attachment, even if I hadn't wanted to acknowledge it, which, long story short, led me to moving back.
CRAIG: It was not a brilliant idea to have our country's political, economic and cultural centres in the same place, but that is just the way England is set up. But if you're based in the East Midlands, you're, like, two hours away, you can come and see plays in London. Or you can read the plays. You don’t have to live in London, you don’t have to be part of the Royal Court Writers group. But if you are going to expose yourself to the gamut of the craft, and if you want to be involved in that, then I'd suggest your work probably has to be in conversation with that.
JAYNE: I have a problem with ambition. The idea that someone believes they can identify the more ambitious playwrights is absolutely bullshit, because ambition often comes from money. It’s a class system. Creativity is in all of us. We've all got stories. But if you're struggling to pay the bills, and you're really thinking about where you're going to get your next meal from, you're not thinking about what play you're writing or how you can be creative. You certainly can't afford to live in London, or take a show to Edinburgh Fringe. So it really annoys me when people talk about regionality and ambition.
LAURA: I think too often we fall into generalization when we talk about playwrights and regionality. What's exciting at the moment, is that we're seeing more people being specific about where they're from. And I think actually, when you're just a writer from a place, speaking very specifically to and about that place and to the people and the communities that are kind of invested in that space, that's when we communicate something really clear about place.
MUFARO: I did the Royal Court Young Writers Program a long time ago, and I remember used to take buses, trains, everything, planes, trains, automobiles, to get there and back, like at midnight, 2am. But beyond that, I didn't move to London. I feel like I've been nurtured by where I'm from. I'm a mix of Zimbabwe, but I'm Nottingham as well. I'm weird in that way. But this is where my work comes from. It's the life blood of me and it's also where my ambition comes from. I want to write a play that can reach and touch a London audience from Nottingham and be like, ‘This is our style’, you know what I mean? I engage with it, but I don’t want to be it.
LAURA: Moving back to Lincolnshire at the time I did, I saw how the East Midlands creative community was really starting to get going and come together. Lincoln used to feel like it was a really long way away from, like, Nottingham and Derby and Leicester and places where other stuff was happening, and it feels like we've kind of connected the dots a lot more now. So, now, honestly, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, and I wouldn't write about anywhere else.
To read more, and to be part of the conversation, join Script East Midlands’ very own Script Club.