Abstract
The 1994/95 season of new plays by first time writers is emblematic of the Court’s new policy of “rapid turnover, rapid expansion” which aimed to directly challenge the vision of the past and dramatically augment the number of plays in production at the theater. Although the theater’s own grassroots initiative, the Young Peoples’ Theatre (YPT), was central to the Court’s ability to sustain this policy, its contribution has been largely overlooked in existing scholarship. Holden, therefore, assesses the ways in which the YPT sourced and developed a new generation of playwrights which ultimately supported the Court in the realization and implementation of its vision.
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Notes
- 1.
Graham Whybrow quoted in Jacqueline Bolton, Demarcating Dramaturgy: Mapping Theory onto Practice, unpublished doctoral thesis (University of Leeds, 2011), 66.
- 2.
Jacquelin Bolton, “Capitalizing (on) New Writing: New Play Development in the 1990s,” Studies in Theatre and Performance 32, no. 2 (2012): 209–225.
- 3.
James Reynolds and Andy W. Smith (eds.), Howard Barker’s Theatre: Wrestling with Catastrophe (London: Methuen, 2015), 117.
- 4.
Bolton, “Capitalizing,” Abstract.
- 5.
Bolton, “Capitalizing,” 217.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Graham Whybrow quoted in Ruth Little and Emily McLaughlin, The Royal Court Theatre Inside Out (London: Oberon, 2007), 284.
- 8.
Little and McLaughlin, 294.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Bolton, “Capitalizing,” 214.
- 11.
Little and McLaughlin, 292.
- 12.
Ibid., 294. Author’s emphasis.
- 13.
Bolton, Demarcating Dramaturgy, 55.
- 14.
Little and McLaughlin, 286, and Bolton, “Capitalizing (on) New Writing,” 217.
- 15.
Little and McLaughlin, 357, 352, 286. The authors state how East Is East had originally been written in 1982 and was later developed in conjunction with Tamasha Theatre, and Shopping and Fucking had undergone a lengthy development period with Max Stafford-Clark’s Out of Joint Theatre Company at the Finborough Theatre. Blasted had been developed during Kane’s time on the MA Playwriting course at Birmingham University.
- 16.
Bolton, “Capitalizing,” 217.
- 17.
Little and McLaughlin, 294.
- 18.
Ibid., 286.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
Elyse Dodgson, “The Royal Court Young Peoples’ Theatre: An Outline of Strategies and Aims for 1991–2,” 1990. THM/273/4/20/13.
- 21.
Anthony Jackson, “From ‘Rep’ to ‘Regional’—Some Reflections on the State of Regional Theatre in the 1980s,” in The Glory of the Garden: English Regional Theatre and the Arts Council 1984–2009, ed. Kate Dorney and Ros Merkin (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010): 23; and Ian Brown, “‘Guarding Against the Guardians’: Cultural Democracy and ACGB/RAA Relations in The Glory Years,” in The Glory of the Garden: English Regional Theatre and the Arts Council 1984–2009, ed. Kate Dorney and Ros Merkin (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 29.
- 22.
Regional Arts Associations were housed across all of England except for Buckinghamshire.
- 23.
Nicholas Holden, Building the Engine Room: A Study of the Royal Court Young Peoples’ Theatre and its Development into the Young Writers’ Programme, unpublished doctoral thesis (University of Lincoln, 2018), 141.
- 24.
Dodgson, “Strategies and Aims.”
- 25.
Nicholas Holden, Interview with Dominic Tickell, 2016.
- 26.
Aleks Sierz, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today (London: Faber and Faber, 2001), 210.
- 27.
Nicholas Holden, Interview with Graham Whybrow, 2016.
- 28.
To qualify as part of the scheme a playwright must be within the first ten years of their career. Jerwood New Playwrights. Jerwood Charitable Foundation. http://www.jerwoodcharitablefoundation.org/projects/the-royal-court-theatre-jerwood-new-playwrights/ (accessed July 10, 2016).
- 29.
Dominic Tickell, Report from the Royal Court Young Peoples’ Theatre to the English Stage Company Council, 1994. THM/273/4/20/16.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Stephen Daldry, Preface. In Coming on Strong: New Writing from the Royal Court Theatre (London: Faber and Faber, 1995), vii.
- 32.
Ibid., viii.
- 33.
Rebecca Prichard quoted in Coming on Strong, 246.
- 34.
Little and McLaughlin, 294.
- 35.
Elaine Aston, Feminist Views on the English Stage: Women Playwrights, 1990–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 61. In her chapter titled “Girl Power, the New Feminism,” Aston critically engages with the work of some of the most significant new women playwrights on the stage in the 1990s, including the plays of Judy Upton and Rebecca Prichard.
- 36.
Stephen Daldry, 1004, Fax to Fiona McCall. THM/273/4/20/16.
- 37.
Bolton, “Capitalizing,” 214; and Sierz, In-Yer-Face, xi and 15.
- 38.
Little and McLaughlin, 295.
- 39.
Harriet Devine, Looking Back: Playwrights at the Royal Court: 1956–2006 (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), 242–243. Dominic Dromgoole was artistic director at the Bush Theatre from 1990 to 1996. He recalls how the Bush liked Some Voices “but not enough to produce it” and the Court “snapped it up.” (Dominic Dromgoole, The Full Room: An A–Z of Contemporary Playwriting [London: Methuen, 2000], 221.)
- 40.
Nicholas Holden, Interview with April De Angelis, 2016.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
Graham Whybrow quoted in Bolton, “Capitalizing,” 215.
- 43.
Sierz, In-Yer-Face, 215.
- 44.
Little and McLaughlin, 286; and Bolton, “Capitalizing,” 217.
- 45.
Michael Wynne returned to the Court again in 2009 with The Priory and in 2015 with Who Cares.
- 46.
Little and McLaughlin, 264.
- 47.
Nicholas Holden, Interview with Carl Miller, 2015. In the summer of 1997, Stephen Daldry announced his resignation and Ian Rickson became the theater’s new artistic director in August of that year. At the same point, Dominic Tickell resigned from the YPT and was replaced by Carl Miller. Miller had been an assistant director at the Royal Court, as part of the Regional Theatre Young Directors Scheme, since the early 1990s and, as a result, much of his time prior to his appointment as the YPT’s final director, had been spent working on YPT endeavors.
- 48.
Little and McLaughlin, 366.
- 49.
Harvey had developed his first play for the Royal Court, Mohair, during the Young Writers’ Festival’s work in Hull in the build-up to the 1988 Festival. He returned to the Court again in 1992 when his second play, Wildfire, was produced in the Theatre Upstairs.
- 50.
Little and McLaughlin, 9.
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Holden, N. (2020). “In the Pursuit of New Writers”: The Royal Court Young Peoples’ Theatre and the Development of First-Time Playwrights in the 1990s. In: Boles, W. (eds) After In-Yer-Face Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39427-1_2
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