The Lyric Theatre is delighted to host a workshop for the Verity Bargate Award 2020 (submissions deadline, 10th January 2020).

The workshop will be facilitated by playwright Dylan Coburn Gray (winner of the 2017 Verity Bargate Award for Citysong), with an emphasis on the interplay of form and content.

Can the wrong beginning banjax a beautiful idea? Does a good ending always require killing everyone, marrying everyone, or making a mess of the stage? Why’s it so hard to write a good play about poverty? How much written in hesitation proves you’re a good writer with an ear for how people ‘really talk’, and how much is just, like, WELL annoying and all? How do you write a play made of fragments if you’re not Caryl Churchill? If a good play is a cake, how do you keep your play from tasting like eggs and flour and you stayed up all night to write it the night before the deadline? These are the questions at the heart of this workshop, for theatre writers and makers with a playful spirit. Participants will be encouraged to talk about works in progress – so that strategies and tools for navigating tensions/difficulties/boring bits can be offered – but this is not required.

This is a free event but booking is essential. 30 places available.

Dylan Coburn Gray is a playwright and theatremaker. His sole authored work includes Boys and Girls (winner of the Fishamble Best New Writing Award, nominated for the Stewart Parker Trust award) and Citysong (winner of Soho Theatre’s Verity Bargate Award 2017). Collaborative work with MALAPROP Theatre includes Love+ (winner of the Spirit of Fringe award at Dublin Fringe Fest 2015) and Everything Not Saved (winner of the Georganne Aldrich Heller Award 2017, The Guardian’s Best Shows of Edinburgh Fringe 2018). Both strands of his work play with form, and aim to challenge and delight in equal measure.

https://lyrictheatre.co.uk/event/verity-bargate-award-2020-belfast-workshop/