Siege Perilous and Writer-in-Residence Caroline Dunford are delighted to announce the names of the six playwrights who have secured a place on this year’s Playwright Development Programme, including two from Edinburgh.
They are John Gilmour from Glasgow; Colin Bell, Chris Purnell, Rhiannon Grist and Jen McGregor from Edinburgh, and David Hutchison from West Kilbride. The six were selected from 68 scripts that were submitted to the company in September in this first year of a new programme for emerging playwrights.
Commenting on the process, Caroline said that “it’s been truly exciting to read all the work submitted and is further proof of the sheer amount of writing talent that we have in Scotland. I’ve been involved in other mentoring schemes but for me, this is the first time of doing so with others that have a different perspective than purely the writing craft itself. In that sense, it’s been an invaluable experience for me too”.
The group all met for the first time at McDonald Road Library on Saturday 29th October for a lively session that set the scene for the next 6 months. A number of interesting facts materialised about the participants including that one of them went to Shabbat with Madonna; another is a former life model; and one applied to be the presenter on “Rainbow”. This emerged during an exercise to kick the event off but the names of who did what will remain within the group!
The playwrights will now work with the writer-in-residence during one-to-one sessions to develop their writing skills. This will culminate in each piece being performed by professional actors during workshops in February also to be held at McDonald Road Library.
This is the first year of a 3-year commitment by the company.
