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’ 2025 Cohort
Our complete Young Writers cohort for 2025 are;
Zara Azam, Grace Bartle, Whitney Glover, Sarah Saxby, Phoebe Segal, Aisling Towl, and Sophie Underwood.
We will be working with our 2025 cohort from January until April as they each develop a new piece of writing for the stage. The workshop will culminate in a sharing in late April 2025 at Cambridge Junction.
Our Guest Writers for 2025 will include:
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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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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.
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Andrew is an eco-dramaturg, a playwright, a teacher, a theatre director and a writing coach. He teaches Eco-Theatre, Writing for Radio and Theatre & Performance at the University of Essex where he also completed a PhD in Theatre Studies in 2023.
Andrew's play, 'The Twin', adapted for the stage from Gerband Bakker's Dutch novel of the same name, received a rehearsed reading at the TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association) Conference at the University of Essex in 2022.
OUR SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS
Funding also provided by: The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust