There is something extraordinary about writers in conversation. Ideas, routines, advice, community, vulnerability, bravery, vision… everything is on offer with no holds barred. Inspired by the conversations we have been lucky enough to facilitate and witness, we have created our Writers on Writers series to share the wisdom, camaraderie and heroism of Bruntwood Prize-winning playwrights to aid you on your own heroic journey. We hope they will inspire you to have more conversations with your peers, and focus your aim towards our submissions deadline on Monday 9th January 2025.
On the 12th September 2024 we marked our submissions opening with a Q&A event in Manchester featuring Anna Jordan and Nathan Queeley-Dennis. We wanted to bring these two writers together to share their insights and discoveries about winning the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 10 years apart, in two different moments for the theatre industry, to understand the impact this has had on their journeys as artists. The conversation was chaired by Dramaturg Suzanne Bell, and included questions from the general public.
Anna won the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting in 2013 with her play Yen, which has been produced at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Royal Court Theatre, MCC New York and several international venues; her TV credits include Killing Eve, One Day and Succession. Nathan Queeley-Dennis won the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2022 with his play Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe 2023 to widespread critical acclaim before a sell-out run at the Royal Court Theatre and a UK tour.
Suz: When did you first become aware of the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting?
Nathan: I was at college, and I was looking for audition material for drama school, and my college teacher gave me Mogadishu by Vivienne Franzmann. I ended up using a monologue from that, and it did get me into drama school. Inside the script it said: Winner of the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting. I don’t think I really registered what that meant, but subconsciously the Prize has been in my brain from then. I wasn’t a writer; I was a 16-year-old with a bad attitude! I feel like I didn’t realise until recently that a Bruntwood Prize-winning play was the thing that really catapulted me into this industry.
Anna: I don’t remember it was that long ago! I was an actor and then I started moving into playwriting and directing, and found I was much happier and more fulfilled on that side. Even though I wasn’t getting commissioned or anything, it was like a whole new world I’d discovered, where I could be more in control of my creative output. As an aspiring writer at the beginning of my journey, it became clear that there was a calendar year: the Bruntwood Prize, Verity Bargate, Papatango, 503 Prize, the King’s Cross Award. As a writer you used those as your goals, because when you’re not being commissioned (and if you have a life and a job and commitments) it’s incredibly difficult. It’s a real heroic act I think to get anything finished. So, the Prize was always there, and I had entered and been longlisted twice before Yen in 2013. It had become a pivotal thing in my career already, because it was an aim. It was a date when I needed to have something finished.
Suz: What is a play for you? And how do you approach writing, in your own particular ways?
Anna: It’s funny, I feel less qualified to answer that now than I probably would have five years ago, because I don’t write as many plays now. I am going to be writing a play soon, and I’m quite nervous about it, so maybe Nathan can tell me what a play is, and I can copy what he says…! But I think most importantly a play is a study of change. Working mostly in TV now rather than theatre, there is such a focus on story & plot: on beats, stakes, and hooks. I’m looking forward to coming back and writing a play with that all that new discipline. But essentially, I think what makes a play a play is that it’s a study of change, of characters, of places – it’s as loose as that. Something that exists in time and is performed in public. That’s what I would say a play is. It can be so small, and it can be so enormous as well: it can look small from the outside and be enormous from the inside.
Nathan: For me I think a play is a living and breathing thing. I think at least for me personally, some of my favourite plays and the plays I love the most exist, like you say, in time, but I like to watch a play and think something happened before that time and after that time. We just see what’s happening in that moment and experience everything within that, but the thing that happens afterwards is kind of what we carry with ourselves after the fact of the play.
Suz: When does the itch of an idea take root, and become a compulsion to get it down on paper?
Anna: I talked to a friend this morning and I said, “we should work on something together… but honestly I haven’t had an idea since 2013!” So I’m going to pass to Nathan first.
Nathan: I’ve got so many ideas! I haven’t… I think you’ve got to be selfish to an extent: if there’s something that motivates you or moves you and you feel like there’s a story within that that you can tell, that’s the root. Ultimately, that’s different for every single person in this room. I think that’s what makes writing plays, writing stories, so beautiful: we’ve all got different stories and backgrounds. I’m really in love with my goldfish right now, and the idea of what Squeezy gets up to is really compelling for me, but some people in this room might not care about that, which breaks my heart.
Anna: Is there a TV show coming out?
Nathan: Yeah, there’s that TV show about a goldfish coming out! That thing will differ for every single person. If there is something that compels you or moves you, that’s ultimately the thing you should be writing or making.
Suz: I think that’s simultaneously what is really exciting, but also what is really brave, is that there isn’t a right or wrong. There isn’t a formula to it. There isn’t a sort of “do this and you will be successful”, but what’s really brave about it is that you have to look in yourself. You must be vulnerable enough to dig deep into yourself to create something, and then share it with the world.
Anna: I think the thing about digging deep into yourself and scratching an itch is that you’re interested in the idea! Sometimes when we feel insecure about things – you might feel like you’re trying to start a playwriting journey or career that keeps stopping and starting – I think that so often what we do is look around. We look at what is being produced, what writers we like are writing about, what we think the world needs right now, what we think might be controversial or new or different – and what we kind of ignore is what interests us. I’ve written stuff that I’m not interested in before (and you can do it!), but for something like this, how interested you are in an idea is a great measure. I don’t think you’ll ever be able to convince other people to be truly interested and truly engaged with something if you’re not. When I first started writing I had loads and loads and loads of ideas – I had so many ideas!!! And from a total point of privilege now, I’ve worked solidly for a long time, I keep saying, “I just need a bit of time off to come up with some ideas again.” Oh, and then the other thing – stop trying to write a good play! It’s really important. Don’t try to write a good play. You can only write a truthful play. Let everyone else worry about whether it is good or not.
Suz: Anna, it’s eleven years since you won. How has your relationship to the play Yen changed in the past eleven years, and what kind of life has the play gone onto have since winning the prize?
Anna: It remains the root of everything I’m doing, really. And I know that sounds like an obvious thing to say but I really do believe it. My first TV job was working on Succession – that came directly from working with an agent that picked me up seeing Yen when it was on at the Royal Court. Jessie Armstrong – the showrunner of Succession – read Yen. It’s still the sample of mine that a lot of people read. And it continues to be this kind of root that everything grows from, which is really satisfying and enjoyable. It’s had lots of productions all over the world, I’m so proud of it, but I’ve really moved on as a writer since then. I was saying to someone the other day, “God I really miss the days of the vomit plays!” I feel like I should have been writing much earlier than I was, so when I came to writing I just vomited out all this stuff – stories that were ready to come out, I just hadn’t realised. So, I have absolutely loads of affection for Yen. In fact, the other day my agent said, “oh we’ve had someone sniffing around about doing a feature film of it, would you want to do that yourself?” and I actually said no. I would want to be involved, but I think for me I feel like I’ve moved on. And sometimes I also feel like… God, I’ll never write anything that goodagain! But that’s alright.
Suz: Nathan, your experience winning with Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz in 2022 is much more recent. Can you say a bit about the journey you’ve gone on since winning the Prize, and the impact the Prize has had on you as a writer, actor and artist in such a short space of time?
Nathan: I think honestly it has completely changed my life in the most ridiculous way possible. Two years ago today, I was just chilling in my flat, and Suz rang me and was like “you’ve been shortlisted!” Come November after winning it was like a snowball: all linked to this exact moment in my life, it’s been one of the greatest journeys. I remember the night before the Prize, I went and just stared at the Royal Exchange Theatre building. Coming back two years later: I’ve written two new plays, I’m working on a film and on TV projects! I know for a fact that if I didn’t win or enter the prize, I wouldn’t be in this situation. And I nearly didn’t enter the prize! I fully didn’t. I was just faffing – Papatango, Verity Bargate, Early Theatre Practitioners, Theatre503 – and I kept putting them off, putting them off, putting them off. Bruntwood was the last open. I was like, “you know what, you never know.” I was just hoping for some sort of feedback because then I could know if the play was even good. It’s completely changed everything for me. I always say you should enter, even if you’re not sure on the play, because it doesn’t have to be the finished article either.
Suz: Nathan, you touched on this a little bit, but how has performing in the show been, and did you write the play with the intention that you would perform it?
Nathan: Performing your own writing is really intense. But it’s quite interesting: as an actor you want the gratification of an audience, and as a writer you want the gratification of an audience. So, I’m onstage experiencing that simultaneously with Bullring. Originally, I wrote it as a three-minute monologue for me to perform at a competition in 2018. I ended up winning the competition and getting through to the national final, and then I didn’t win but someone was like, “oh we’d love it if you could send us a full version” and I was like “yeah I’ll send it to you next week!” – but I had nothing prepared at all! Once I had a full play I never intended to perform in it, and up until before the Edinburgh run I was having conversations where I was like, “oh no, I don’t think I’ll do it,” and my friends, my producer, my agent were all like “what?!” So I ended up doing it.
Suz: Do you think about the role of the actor when you’re writing? How does your skill as an actor inform your writing? Do you read out your work as you write?
Nathan: The first thing I think about is the audience. I wouldn’t write anything that I wouldn’t want to watch, which is selfish… but why not? I always try to think: if I was in the audience watching this, what would I be thinking? What would I be feeling? What would be unexpected at this moment? I always try to channel that. Bullring is effectively a conversation with one actor and an audience, so throughout the process of writing, I was asking: what are the audience going to be experiencing? When do they need something new or different? When do we need to switch it up a bit?
Suz: Anna, how has it been navigating a journey across both stage and screen?
Anna: When we were workshopping Yen, I always remember you saying to me not long after I won the prize, “don’t go, let’s not lose you to TV, please let’s not lose you to TV,” and I went “Suz, I would never!” And then I fucked straight off to TV. I think that broadly the difference between theatre and TV is as a playwright you are left alone a lot more to bring your vision to the stage; in TV, you are managed at every single stage. I think it’s a reflection of financial investment – there’ll be a lot more voices in the room, there will be a lot more people with opinions, etcetera – it can feel like you’re really being micromanaged. When I first started writing for TV I did a BBC Writers course, and I remember thinking “why are they giving me notes before I’ve even written anything, this is ridiculous? I feel like I’m being told I’ve done it wrong, and I haven’t even done it yet!” I realised that was just TV development – it’s very different. But when you’ve got people sitting in front of TVs, it’s very, very easy to switch off. We talk about ‘second screen content’ – I find this a bit disgusting actually – where what you write has to grip people so much that it takes them away from what they’re watching on their other screen! There’s a kind of unforgiving quality I think in the rigour of the plot, and audiences wanting to know what happens next, and what are the hooks, which I found very difficult and quite demoralising early on until I managed to reframe it through what I was passionate about. Character, dialogue and relationship is where I feel at home, it’s where I feel most happy and excited. Once I realised that what they’re saying is that viewers care about what happens next to your character and things must be high stakes for your character I levelled it a lot more easily. There’s a real rigour; it’s really tough. But I think that I’m looking forward to bringing that back to theatre, and seeing how that impacts how I write, and hopefully be narratively strong.
Suz: Nathan, as someone starting out on that journey, how are you finding navigating it?
Nathan: Yeah, it’s really hard. What you said about the realisation, I feel like I’m currently going through beginning the process of that. It is quite demoralising at times and it’s like “just let me write, and I’ll figure it out!” But it is about bringing out more character and developing it in that regard, which I do enjoy.
Audience member: How do you approach writing a play when you haven’t studied, trained or worked in theatre?
Anna: I hope you don’t feel that your work is any less valuable or interesting because you don’t come from that world. It’s really refreshing and interesting to hear the voices of people who haven’t necessarily been part of the industry, or maybe haven’t been and seen loads of plays. There’s a freshness there. I think this is a good opportunity to discuss keeping notes, and how important that is for a writer. For a play I keep something called a ‘living document’, which is something that I’ve done over years and sort of developed. Essentially it’s a notes document for an idea of something I’m working on, but it will include my brain splurge, it might include bits of dialogue, it might include references, photos, whatever. It’s kind of like a research document, kind of like a notes document, that might evolve into the script, or the script might end up going on a different page. But the living document is a place which can change and grow, and ideas can change and grow. As writers when we have an idea, we receive information all the time – how do you capture that information? And it sounds like a small thing, but are you using an app on your phone which syncs across your devices which means that information is always going to be there for you? Because no note is too small when you’re growing stuff. Capture what’s going on in your head, none of it is a waste. I really encourage you to think about how you keep notes, where you keep notes, and that no note is too small or too silly. Your notes can actually be a really creative document. The second thing I’m going to mention is morning pages, which is something I talk about a lot, and isn’t even something I stick to myself doing regularly every day. There’s a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, which is a very interesting, quite intense course of creative recovery for anyone who wants to be creative. The main tool of The Artist’s Way is morning pages: first thing in the morning you get up, you write three pages of freehand A4, whatever comes into your head – don’t censor, don’t judge, don’t let the pen leave the page. I’ve got a kid, I can’t always do that first thing in the morning, but I do try to do daily pages. It warms the brain up, it warms you up to writing, and it also clears barriers. Sometimes you’re just moaning, writing about things you’ve got to do or whatever, it doesn’t have to make sense. The third thing about it, which I find the most interesting, is if you do this over a period of time, images start to present themselves to you: ideas, characters, dialogue. It’s almost like a subconscious exercise, and if you’re working on something – if you’re studying and thinking about something, if you’re growing this idea – stuff is going to come to you within those pages that you can then nab. So I guess if I was to join those two things together, the idea is to be as generous and compassionate with yourself as possible; to think that any little thing that I think about this is valuable, and to capture that.
Nathan: I can’t really add much to that, but I think what I would say is that I think in theatre there can sometimes be a bit of a hivemind in the way we create and work and make work and everything in-between. I think if you are from a different kind of avenue or path, I think you should use that as a USP as a completely different perspective that we wouldn’t have experienced. I don’t think that should scare you, I think that should excite you, and I think you should keep that at the forefront because your experience will be entirely different to a lot of other writers. That’s it.
Audience member: It can be difficult when you’ve taken time away from work as a writer – you can start to question whether you’re even a writer if you’re not writing. Have you ever taken a break and how would you go about getting yourself back into it?
Nathan: Part of the reason I wrote and developed Bullring further was because I was sitting at home on my PlayStation doing nothing. I wasn’t working in the industry; I was working at the same pub I’d been working at since I was 16 and doing absolutely nothing. I was yearning for some form of creativity. And the beautiful thing about writing is you have the ownership of what you create; rather than doing other people’s projects, you get to create something that you want to see and make. It started as a hobby for me. I think we all start doing it because we love it. Remember that, and use that, and just do it because it’s something you want to do. Everything else can come afterwards.
Anna: Two things I’d think about: novelty and limitation. What I mean by that is, if you can, take yourself somewhere new. Or lock yourself in your bedroom overnight and say, “I’m writing all night tonight.” Or take a train to the seaside for the day and say, “I’m going to write on the train, then sit on the beach and write whatever comes to me.” Creating a bit of novelty can be a really great way of kickstarting a bit of creativity into your life. And I think then limitation is kind of a similar thing: it’s amazing what you can achieve in half an hour a day, or an hour a day. Consistency is key, so setting yourself those limitations of “I’m going to go and have a coffee in a coffee shop, and I’m going to write while I’m there, and then I won’t write when I come home” Or “Friday is my writing night, and I’m going to write for three hours.” It helps to give you structure, because when you think about starting writing again…it’s a really vague ocean, isn’t it? I also think it’s great to have something like the Bruntwood Prize in your sights, but as you’re starting out, you don’t have to say, “I’m going to write a play.” Get some writing prompts, hear someone on the bus, find the first line of dialogue, write a scene from that – be inspired by whatever. Don’t think about the end goal, just get writing again.
Audience member: Is it normal to take long breaks, and if yes, how long have you taken? How does a working writer balance these breaks across multiple projects without losing confidence somewhere along the line?
Anna: I think there is no normal – that’s very important to say. Nathan and I were chatting earlier because I’m always interested – like I’m interested in what celebrities have in their fridges – in what’s your daily routine as a writer? Anyway, he totally shamed me because he writes until 6pm every day, and I don’t do that. But there really is no normal. I’ve spoken to a counsellor about my writing process and how I felt a lot of shame around it. I just want to put in sustained hours of writing and for it to feel normal and natural, and it doesn’t. It always feels chaotic and difficult. I think that there’s nothing wrong with taking a break if that’s what you feel like you want to do, or if life stipulates it. What I would say is that it’s very easy to take a break and then go back and say, “that’s rubbish, that’s rubbish, that’s rubbish.” I think if you take a break you need to do it with the caution that you’re not going to dismiss what’s been written before. I think there’s times to take breaks where it’s useful, like at the end of a first draft, before going back. If you’ve encountered a problem or an issue you need to solve, as long as you come away from your writing session with that clearly in your head, then your subconscious can go to work on that and hopefully it will sort itself out for you before the next time you come and sit down. But I also think, just like how sometimes it’s very appropriate to take a break, sometimes it’s just as appropriate to push through. Without it being a wage packet or a deadline, you need that impetus to finish.
Suz: It does make you think of the metaphor of giving birth.
Anna: Yeah, when you get to the pushing stage.
Suz: Can I take a break? No, push!
Nathan: Yeah, and I’d say, fair enough I work until 6pm, but that’s because I’ll do three days’ worth of intense work and then you won’t see me for a month doing anything. I wrote the first ten pages of Bullring in half a day, and then I didn’t write anything for the rest of the year. I started writing the play in 2018, but I didn’t submit a full version until June 2022. It took me four years to write it completely and that’s not to say I spent every single moment of those four years looking at the structure, looking at the form, and doing all that kind of stuff. I was out, you know what I mean! The longest break I took was like a month and a half, but sometimes you need that time to ruminate and let the story develop. If you don’t feel like you have a deadline to hit, I don’t think you should necessarily push yourself to finish something if it’s not there yet. But I also really appreciated what you just said Anna about not then coming back to it like “oh it’s done because it’s rubbish” – push yourself to finish it. And do other things – watch other things, write something else, just take your head away – because then when you come back you have a completely different perspective. You grow, you change.
Audience member: It’s one thing to have a good idea, it’s another to write a play – never mind a good play. Do you have any sense when you’re writing that you’re onto something good? How do you understand what is working, and what needs to be changed or removed?
Nathan: It’s quite hard – it’s easy to have loads of feelings of self-doubt. I submitted to the Bruntwood Prize just to see if Bullring was any good, so it’s difficult for me to say! In creative industries, I think you’ve kind of got to have the mindset of those very arrogant boxers, where they’re like “I’m the best in the world.” I think you sometimes must have that, and it’s so hard to have that when you’re reading your own work. I just finished the first draft of a play, and I’ve not read it back again for about three weeks – every single time it comes back in my head I’m just like “it’s terrible, it’s so bad!” You’ve kind of just got to have faith in your voice – again it comes back to that thing of being like, “I have a story I want to tell, and I have something that I want to share.” Ultimately, that trumps everything else. It’s like what Anna said, don’t try to write a good play, just try and tell the story.
Anna: I think that’s so good! “I have a story I want to share, and I’m going to do what I need to do to share that.” I think that really helps to remove competitiveness, doesn’t it? That you have a need to share something, and so you’re going to find a way to translate it, to convey it in the clearest and best way. And then it sort of removes the ego from it, doesn’t it? Then the story is paramount, and you as a writer are less important. Anne Lamott, who wrote Bird by Bird which is a beautiful book about writing, talks about ‘shitty first drafts’ a lot. She talks about this idea that you just must accept that your first draft is going to be shit, and it’s not for anyone else, it’s absolutely fine that it’s complete rubbish – but that once it’s there there’s something else to build on. We can do processing in our head, and we can do processing on the page, but when we process on the page, we’ve got something to go back and work with. When we do it in our head, it’s gone – I always think it’s very important to remember that. The more you can get down on the page, the higher your self-esteem will be, because you did something. Even if it’s not good, there’s something there to work with.
Suz: I got a message from Elin Schofield, who’s an amazing theatre director, last week where she said, “shit makes really good fertiliser.” And I said, “Oh my god I’m going to quote you forever – that is playwriting to a tee.”
Conversation transcribed by Clodagh Chapman.
Edited for publication by Rosie Thackeray.