Five more of our Fun Palaces playwrights

We bring to you the second installment of our fantastic playwrights who are currently poring over their scripts for our Fun Palace in Wales. So without further ado, here we go...

Abigail Docherty

Abigail is currently Pearson Playwright in residence at the Tron in Glasgow. Her play Sea and Land and Sky won the Tron's OPEN STAGE award and is published by Methuen Drama. Other work includes Four Parts Broken (National Theatre of Scotland), One Thousand Paper Cranes (Tron / Imaginate International Children’s Festival) and Room (Tron). BBC Radio 4 plays include Ursula and Boy and Goblin Market.

Clare Duffy

Clare is a playwright and director. She teaches at Glasgow University and is a co-director of Unlimited Theatre. Clare is currently Artist In Residence at Summerhall Arts Centre, Edinburgh, an Associate Playwright at Playwrights’ Studio, Scotland and has just been announced as the new ISAH/Traverse Theatre Fellow.

She will be bringing Play Dough, a ‘re-mix’ of Money: The Game Show to the Edinburgh Fringe 2014 as part of the Made In Scotland showcase.

Clare wrote and directed Money: The Game Show, in 2013 which was a co-production between Unlimited Theatre and The Bush. 'This playful, thoughtful and riotously entertaining piece is right on the money'. ****The Guardian ‘clever and remarkably understandable’ ‘ingenious’. New York Times. ****Financial Times & Scotsman. The play is published by Oberon Books and is scheduled to be remounted in Seoul, South Korea 2014. 

Clare won a Pearson Award for her first full-length play, Crossings in 2003, which was published and toured the UK in 2005. (**** The Scotsman) This led to her being Writer In Residence at the West Yorkshire Playhouse 2004. Clare has also written drama for Radio 4 and co-wrote ANA, a bi-lingual play for Stella Quines and Imago Theatre, with Pierre-Yves Lemieux, which opened in Montreal in November 2011 and toured Scotland in Spring 2012 (**** Scotsman & Herald). She wrote The Cbeebies Christmas Carol 2013 and is very much looking forward to Magnetic North’s production of her play Some Other Stars in the autumn of 2014 about a man with ‘locked-in’ syndrome.

Clare has lived in Tollcross, Edinburgh for 10 years and helps out in her partner’s wine shop when it’s busy.

Samantha Ellis

Samantha is a playwright and journalist and her first non-fiction book, How To Be A Heroine, is published by Chatto & Windus; Nigella Lawson said it was “All the books I love, remembered”, the Observer called it “fantastically inspirational”, and the Scotsman called it “a life-affirming feminist text".

Her previous plays include Cling To Me Like Ivy (Birmingham Rep and on tour), The Thousand and Second Night (LAMDA), Startle Response (Young Vic workshop production), Martin’s Wedding (Blind Summit/BAC), Patching Havoc (Theatre 503) and Sugar and Snow (Radio 4 and Hampstead Theatre showcase). The Guardian called Cling To Me Like Ivy, “funny, sad and compassionate...that genuinely rare beast, a popular comedy with heart, brains and the stomach to make some difficult choices”. She has also written short plays for Menagerie Theatre, The Miniaturists, Liverpool Everyman, Agent 160, Pursued by a Bear and Floodtide.

She is a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and has been in residence at Metal, and on attachment at the Soho Theatre, Birmingham Rep, Hampstead Theatre and the Unicorn Theatre. Her play Anatomical Venus, an immersive thriller set in 1850s London, will be produced by Goat and Monkey Theatre in 2015. This September, Urgent Theatre is producing her Starlore for Beginners and other short plays at Theatre 503.

Sarah Grochala

Sarah studied on the MPhil in Playwriting Studies at Birmingham University and has been recognised as one of the course’s most distinguished graduates. Before turning to writing, she worked as an actress for many years, playing roles in the West End and in television drama. Her play S-27 (published by Oberon) won the 2007 Protect the Human Playwriting Competition and was also shortlisted for The King’s Cross Award and the Leah Ryan Prize for Emerging Women Writers. S-27 premiered at the Finborough Theatre in June 2009 and was a Time Out Critics Choice. The play was revived at the Griffin Theatre in Sydney in March 2010 (Time Out Sydney Critics Choice) and at the Annex Theatre in Toronto in 2012. Sarah was the winner of the 2011 OffWestEnd.Com Adopt a Playwright Award for her play Smolensk, which is currently in production with Snapdragon Productions. 

Her writing has been supported by the RSC, the National Theatre Studio and the Peggy Ramsay Foundation. Sarah is currently an associate artist with Headlong and Lecturer in Writing for Theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Of her short play for Agent 160 in 2012, The Red Shoes, the Guardian wrote “Director Abigail Graham and performer Jennifer Jackson make the most of Sarah Grochala's The Red Shoes, an astonishingly direct yet poetic piece of writing, a perfect miniature that explores desire and madness in London's Westfield shopping centre.”  

Katie McCullough

Katie McCullough is a graduate of Bournemouth Media School and the Royal Court Theatre, London. She's a playwright, screenwriter and founder of Festival Formula; a consultancy company focusing on filmmakers that covers film festival strategy, social media presence, and crowdfunding consultancy. Her plays have been performed at: the ICA, Theatre503, Southwark Playhouse, Old Vic Tunnels, Arcola, the BAC, and more. She’s received funding from Arvon Foundation and support from the ICA Lab as well as mentoring from the Blaine Brothers, Leo Butler, Polly Clark and Simon Stephens. Katie has worked with several companies to create one-on-one theatrical experiences and also site specific narratives. Her plays include Ella_OMalley_Audition.mov (Miniaturists, Arcola, 2014), Dropped Sequins (UK Centre for Carnival Arts, 2013), London Pride (Wandsworth Arts Festival, 2013) and The Story Project (Ugly Sister Productions, Arcola/Southwark Playhouse/Theatre503, 2012). See her website for more information. 

So there's the second wave of playwrights for you, and STILL we have six more to delight you with. And we can also shout that we're now at 73% of our goal. AMAZING! We still have a bit to go, and we're happy that we have time left on the Kickstarter clock to make it happen. So thank you for helping to make it happen if you've already pledged... And if you haven't pledged yet, there's still time!