As we prepare for the next round of the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, we want to support you in exploring your writing practice – whether you are coming to playwriting for the first or 100th time.  We are delighted to bring together some of the most exciting playwriting talent to support your journey towards creating a play which we hope you will submit for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2025!  

Writing is an inherently brave act. One that demands playwrights to be vulnerable enough to explore and express complex and contradictory emotions, attuned enough to dig deep into their own experiences and views of the world, and empathetic enough to create a range of voices with curiosity and compassion. Playwrights are courageous people, delving into their imaginations to create fully formed worlds through energized stories. The practice is a marriage of head, heart and gut.  

With this in mind, we want to support writers in their bravery by empowering them with psychological knowledge and skills to support both their playwriting process and their well-being. We have commissioned a series of incisive workshops exploring the personal practice of 9 exemplary playwrights and designed a series of 8 well-being workshops with neuro-psychodynamic coaching psychologist Anna Webster. 9 MONTHS TO BIRTH YOUR PLAY will offer every artist working in the world of new writing an invaluable opportunity to stop and notice how they create work: what are they seeking? What are the feelings and needs that drive them and their characters? How do they counter overwhelm and self-doubt to enter their flow state?  

This series will explore how personal realities impact the way that people work with their fellow artists, with the hope that this understanding can empower more well-being-informed, dynamic, creatively stimulating theatre-making processes. It will also frame and interrogate the psychology of drama as an active negotiation between the writer, the artists staging the work, and the audience experiencing the work – demanding that we think about playwriting as a living (rather than a literary) form that necessitates performance.  

We hope that 9 MONTHS TO BIRTH YOUR PLAY can be an invaluable resource and opportunity for artists to explore well-being-centred approaches to their practice whilst gaining a more rigorous understanding of the psychology of drama. For us, birthing this series has clarified the collaborative nature of great playwriting: that the skill lies in an understanding of the human condition, which begins with the same understanding of oneself. That the words we write are not fixed and unchangeable: that they are the seeds offered for our fellow artists (directors, dramaturgs, actors, designers, lighting designers…) to plant – caretaking the play into the hearts and minds of all who encounter it. 

We hope you will join us on this journey, and that it inspires you to delve into your creativity and birth a new play to share with the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2025. 

Schedule: 

These workshops will be posted to our Writing Resources page – no sign ups, no registration, free for all to access.

A Call to Arms: Juliet Gilkes Romero – Friday 26th April 

Well-being Workshop 1: Mindfulness – Friday 3rd May 

Getting Started & Asking Questions: Nicola McCartney – Friday 17th May 

Well-being Workshop 2: What Are Feelings For? – Friday 24th May 

Imagining Theatrical Worlds: Ava Wong Davies – Friday 7th June 

Well-being Workshop 3: Basic Psychological Needs – Friday 14th June 

Creating Characters & Giving Them Voice: Jasmine Naziha Jones – Friday 5th July 

Well-being Workshop 4: How Do We Respond When Psychological Needs are Threatened or Thwarted? – Friday 19th July 

Stories Over Ideas: Mia Chung – Friday 9th August 

Well-being Workshop 5: How Do We Respond When Threat Overwhelms the Nervous System? – Friday 23rd August 

Dramatic Action & Event: Rafaella Marcus – Friday 6th September 

Well-being Workshop 6: Inner Conflict, Defences & Dialectics – Friday 20th September 

Structure & Form (And How This Impacts Content…): Carmen Nasr – Friday 4th October 

Well-being Workshop 7: Understanding Shame & Inner Critic – Friday 18th October 

Metaphor & Imagery: Iman Qureshi – Friday 8th November 

Well-being Workshop 8: Flow States & Celebrating Success – Friday 22nd November 

Reading Back & Taking Notice: Kaite O’Reilly – Friday 6th December