Writer Development
Menagerie’s Writer Development work has intrinsically been linked to Hotbed and our production cycle. Our chief aim is to evolve relationships with writers and help new plays to emerge in the process.
*Applications for Hidden Voices 2025 will open in spring 2025.
**Applications for our 2025 cohort of Young Writers have now closed.
Menagerie have been running the Young Writers’ Workshop programme since 2013 and have connected with so many fantastic writers through this programme. We have gone on to support and commission writers from the programme, most recently 2021 Young Writers’ Workshop alumni Martha Loader.
The Young Writer’s Workshops are an intense mentoring and development programme for early career playwrights. We create a space for participants to explore, to take risks, and to dig deep - all with the aim of discovering what they have to offer the world and the form they wish to use.
Our latest Writer Development Programme and our first open call out for shows! Hidden Voices works to develop shows with artists that consider themselves to be under-represented in some way. We took on 3 Hidden Voices Artists in 2024 and worked with them all to bring their work to life at Hotbed 2024.
Young Writers’ 2024 Cohort
Our complete Young Writers cohort for 2024 are; Susanna Wolff, Jenny Wall, Katie Smith, Emma Pallett, Ruth Mestel, Erin Hutton, Stan Gordon, and Louis Catliff.
Our Guest Writers included:
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Winsome is an award-winning writer for stage, radio, film and television. She is currently under commission to the National Theatre, Headlong Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, the Royal Court and the Unicorn Theatre.
Theatre includes: ROCKETS AND BLUE LIGHTS (National Theatre, Manchester Royal Exchange & BBC Radio 3); ONE UNDER (Graeae Theatre Company/UK Tour, Kiln Theatre); LEAVE TAKING (Bush Theatre, Liverpool Playhouse & National Theatre); GLUTATHIONE (Young Vic Theatre); THE PRINCIPLES OF CARTOGRAPHY (Bush Theatre); TITUBA (Hampstead Theatre); CLEANING UP (Clean Break) and more.
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Martha Loader is a playwright, actor and producer from Ipswich. Previous work has been presented by HighTide, Mercury Theatre, Menagerie Theatre Company, and INK. She is an associate artist of the New Wolsey Theatre, has been commissioned by Menagerie, and by the Almeida Theatre as part of their ‘Genesis New Playwrights, Big Plays Programme’. Her play BINDWEED won the Judges Award at the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2022 and will tour in 2024.
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Tim Foley is a writer based in Manchester. His play ELECTRIC ROSARY won the 2017 Bruntwood Prize Judges’ Award. His most recent play, DRIFTWOOD, has recently been produced by Pentabus Theatre for a national tour. Tim’s first full-length play, THE DOGS OF WAR, premiered at the Old Red Lion Theatre in May 2015 and won the 2016 OffWestEnd award for Most Promising New Playwright. He was awarded the Channel 4 Playwright’s bursary in 2016. His second play, ASTRONAUTS OF HARTLEPOOL, premiered at the 2017 VAULT Festival and won the VAULT Origins Award for Outstanding New Work.
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Sarah Woods is an award-winning writer and creative systems thinker. She’s currently a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, where she’s working on the project People & Patterns: Transforming the ways we think and connect when everything is at risk. With Emily Lethbridge (Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies), she has just been awarded a 3-year Icelandic research grant for Kvennaspor: Unearthing and Foregrounding Women in Icelandic Saga Landscapes. She’s founder of Artists In Exile, supporting artists to find refuge in the UK.
News: Young Writer Alumnus Susanna Wolff is taking her Hotbed debut show Totally Fine to the Hen & Chickens Theatre in 2025!
Feb 27/27th & March 1st - Get tickets here!
Young Writers’ Hotbed 2024 Selection:
Totally Fine by Susanna Wolff
“In the last 2 weeks I have had ‘trouble relaxing’ strongly agree, agree, don’t know, disagree, strongly disagree.” But she just needs a break, a beach with no phone and no clients for a week or maybe 6. This is all just a blip, a mistake, a few mistakes. She’s fine, she’s good, great, 100% completely totally fine...
Totally Fine is a play about connection, or lack of it. Talking and being listened to. Existing in the murky place between happiness and despair.
Justine Stops Oil by Louis Catliff
When Justine’s daughter leaves home, her cosy bubble is violently burst. Faced with a dying marriage and rising dread, Justine searches for meaning and finds it in a group of activists protesting oil and pissing everybody off.
Justine Stops Oil is a funny and fast-paced exploration of apathy and activism, rage and hope. It asks what does it take to get people out on the street and what would we be willing to sacrifice for change?
You Forget Yourself by Jenny Wall
Out on the coast, the Victorian sea cure is in full flow. Lacking sleep, appetite, or happiness? Saltwater and simpler living can save you. Between embroidery, bedrest, and submerging themselves daily in the ocean, healing for the women at the Albatross Guesthouse is surely almost certain.
But when a new visitor arrives with the tide, talking about a changing outside world and disputing the effectiveness of the sea cure, everything — and everyone — is thrown into disorder.
OUR SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS
Funding also provided by: The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust