A huge Happy New Year to all of you! Before we share our exciting plans for the year ahead with you, we want to say an enormous thanks to everyone who has supported us over the past year; 2021 was a massive year for us with projects such as the members’ submission window, The Literary Series, and the London Playwrights Festival – and the support we received from the London Playwrights community made it all possible! We hope you’ll continue supporting us this year and help us to grow our organisation, create valuable new resources, and help you to develop as the next generation of playwrights!
So, what’s coming up in 2022?
We’ve kicked off the year in full swing with two major projects going on! The first is completing the 2021 Members’ Submissions Window, as many of you will know, this was a huge undertaking for us last year, with us receiving an overwhelming amount of submissions, we read every single one with precision and provided written feedback, which we know lots of you found valuable. We know a small handful of you are still awaiting your reports and we want you to know that these are on their way and will be with you in the next couple of weeks. From there, we’ll be finalising the shortlist and offering development opportunities to selected writers. We can’t wait to get started on this and help some of you to develop your brilliant plays!
#WrAP2022! Our January Write A Play challenge is well underway and around 200 of you are writing plays with us this month. As well as providing writing prompts and Zoom calls throughout January, we’ll also be hitting you up with some bonus redrafting materials in the Spring to help you get those plays polished! It’s not too late to sign up and we’re happy to send you the resources you’ve missed if you want to start late.
Leading on from this, we’ll then be opening our doors (or window!) for members submissions again in the summer. We learned so much from last year’s process that we know we’ll be able to improve the experience for writers in 2022, and we’re really excited to be able to get to know you and your writing a little more!
Our online book club for plays, Play Club, will also be back for 2022! Like last year, we’ll be using plays written by our members (selected from the 2021 submission window) as the selected texts. After reading the plays, you’ll be invited to a Zoom session to discuss them and then you’ll be able to submit your own, 10 minute play written in response to the text to us! Play Club 2022 will start in March so look out for more details coming soon.
We’ll also be developing a project we started last year further this year. Learn with London Playwrights is a new online resource which includes mini-podcasts on everything you need to know about theatre and playwriting. From in depth looks at iconic plays, to advice on structure, to industry tips, we’ve got you covered. The aim of Learn is put accessible information for playwrights in one place, whether you’re completely new to theatre or want to brush up on topics you’re interested in.
Workshops! Of course, we’ll be continuing with our programme of Zoom workshops this year and we’ll be confirming the dates of our latest round of courses soon. Expect workshops on Crowdfunding, Improvisation, LGBTQ+ Theatre, Writing Musicals, Historical Drama and longer courses where you’ll be able to explore playwriting and share your ideas. Don’t forget, members get at least 20% off our workshops.
The Literary Series was a huge success for us last year and we got plenty of feedback from you to let us know how insightful you found our chats with Literary Managers, Dramaturgs, and New Work Associates. We’re currently developing Series 2 and we plan to make this happen as soon as we can!
We’ll also be continuing with improving our members’ resources. We’ll be running our monthly Zoom sessions for members on the first Wednesday of each month where you can come along and ask questions and share your ideas. We’ll also be updating some of our existing resources including the Self-Producing Handbook and our Submissions Directory – watch this space!
Our Script Consulting Service has also gone from strength to strength in the last year and we’ll be continuing to offer reduced rates for members. We really love this aspect of our work as it means we get to interact with you, so if you have a script for review, do think about sending it our way!
As always, we follow your lead and we will no doubt come up with new ideas and projects throughout the year which will help to support you as writers. Behind the scenes, we’ll be working with writers selected for our develop schemes and we’ll be sure to share this with you along the way. And it goes without saying that we’ll also continue to bring you the latest round-up of opportunities to your inbox for free!
We hope you’re as excited as we are about 2022! We really can’t do any of this without you so your continued support is invaluable to us! We’re grateful for every reader, every social media share, every person who books a workshop, and everyone who tells others about us; as well as our members of course, whose support keeps us going! If you’d like sign up for around the price of a coffee and help to continue our work, you can join here.
Thanks again and here’s to a year of amazing writing!