The Alhambra Theatre in Bradford is excited to announce that Skipton Academy student Felicity Williamson has been chosen as one of the 37 Plays, selected as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s nationwide playwriting search: an ambitious new initiative open to anybody from anywhere in the UK.
Felicity’s play Abandoned was submitted to the 11- to 17-year-olds category. An Island. Now. A young autistic girl meets an islander who teachers her to accept herself for who she is. The idea for her play came from lots of people wanting to know what it is like to have autism. Felicity said:“Not a lot of people understand me, so I thought if I wrote a play then it would be easier than me trying to explain in person. I was interested in what the play could do to help people understand autism. It would share and spread knowledge and that's where my idea came from. It was also very exciting that it was a competition too!’
Teacher of Performance at Skipton Academy, Vanessa Adams added: “Having worked closely with the RSC on various projects, I was delighted to have the opportunity to involve my students in the 37 Plays Project. I decided to make this the Scheme of Work for all Year 8 students for the Autumn Term 2022. I used the 37 Plays information pack and videos from the RSC as well as some of my own ideas and led the students through the whole process from finding their story to writing, adapting, and submitting their plays. All 120 students in Year 8 wrote their own play. A number of these were submitted to the RSC, 3 were chosen for the final 71 and Felicity’s play made it to the 37 Plays!”
Erica Whyman, Acting Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company said:
“It was an honour to chair the distinguished judging panel, all of whom commented on the wonderful variety, originality and quality of the plays on the shortlist.
“We were struck by a number of recurring themes, from climate crisis, to living life online, to questions of class, faith, race, war and consent. From our youngest writers to our most experienced a picture emerges of a country wrestling with big questions, sharing a sense of loss, exploring new identities, striving for happy healthy communities and finding new ways to laugh at ourselves. The collection moves wonderfully and wildly from the domestic to the supernatural, from conventional structures used to tell wholly new stories, to plays that take place inside a gamer’s paradise”.
The search for plays closed on 31 January 2023, attracting over 2,000 submissions. Over a six-week period, 24 readers read 31 plays per week to create an initial longlist of 350 plays. From the longlist, a
total of 71 plays were shortlisted for commendation. The final 37 plays come from writers all over the United Kingdom: from Craigavon to Dawlish, from Cardiff to Edinburgh and Skipton to Wolverhampton and from writers ranging from age 9 to 65. Nearly a third of the selected 37 plays are by writers who have identified as first-time writers.
Erica Whyman added, “Together with our partners nationwide we feel very privileged to have come to know so many writers new to us or plays by writers we already admired. But the collection is not only for us – it is designed to be a gift to anyone, from the most prominent stages in the country to community stages, schools, amateur companies and anyone who is looking for excellent and intriguing new work. It has always mattered to the RSC to celebrate and listen to the instincts and voices of living writers alongside our house playwright. To do so on such a scale and hand-in-hand with our brilliant partners has made for a truly inclusive project on a giant scale. “We will publish the collection in full this autumn by creating staged readings of every play, rehearsed and performed at all of our associate theatre partners and in Stratford at The Other Place and sharing them online alongside the play texts. Ahead of that each writer in the 37 will receive bespoke dramaturgical support to take their play to the next draft.”
Pippa Hill, Head of New Work at the Royal Shakespeare Company, added: “From a field in Scotland where a fish falls from the sky; to a still, dappled woodland containing a sulky wood sprite; from a coral fringed island to the artificial sunlight on the deck of a spaceship via a futuristic hospital, to a horror filled box of muffins on a police station reception desk, this folio of 37 plays takes us absolutely everywhere. “We have plays written from the perspective of mischievous fish; a woman covered in butterflies; an emotional support dog; a dancer in the early days of motherhood; a protesting farmer’s wife tied to a solar panel; musicians in a mosque; a family in North Shields; a dreaming, drowning man; a teenager who becomes a whale; a lost Guyanese man; and a boy who suddenly finds himself at the battle of Hastings; to name just a selection of extraordinary characters that have been created by the writers of our 37 Plays.”
Submissions were requested to be predominantly written in English, or in British Sign Language, with a translation provided for any text not in English language. Submissions should be a complete original story, not a sample of a story or an adaptation of a story and submitted plays must not have had a professional production or be under commission at the time of submission. The judging panel was chaired by Acting Artistic Director of the RSC, Erica Whyman. Completing the panel were theatre-maker and Associate Director of The Unicorn Theatre Rachel Bagshaw, actor and RSC Associate Artist Ray Fearon, Theatre Critic and Associate Editor of The Stage Lyn Gardner, RSC Youth Advisory Board members Harry and Ella, Best-selling author Sharna Jackson,2018 Ian Charleson Award-winner Bally Gill, award-winning playwrights Mark Ravenhill and Juliet Gilkes Romero and actor/writer and RSC Associate Artist David Threlfall.
A full list of shortlisted play titles and writers is available to view via www.37plays.co.uk 37 Plays will explore who we are as a society and inspire conversation about what the future of dramatic writing might look and feel like, on and off our stages. All of the 37 plays selected will be awarded a fee for publication, performance and/or broadcast. Any submission subsequently commissioned for production will be subject to usual commission processes approved by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain.
Full details of Terms and Conditions of entry and associated FAQs can be accessed via 37plays.co.uk
