On 16 March 2017 : 6.00pm – 8.00pm, the Bruntwood Prize hosted a live online workshop with then Associate Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre and judge for the 2017 Prize, director of Katherine Soper’s Wish List at the Royal Exchange Theatre and Royal Court Theatre and Act for Change Founding Member, Matthew Xia.

The aim of this workshop is to inspire, provoke, challenge and support playwrights to create new work. As well as helping to kick-start your writing, this workshop will also explore ideas to inspire you on responsibility, representation and responding to the world around you in playwrighting as well as offering an insight into new writing from a Director’s point of view whilst setting writing tasks throughout.

Matthew Xia Associate Artistic Director at the Royal Exchange. His work here includes the winner of the 2015 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting Wish List, Into the Woods for Christmas 2015 and Brink. In 2012 he received the RTYDS placement at the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse directing the premiere of Daniel Matthew’s Scrappers and was Associate Director for the Everyman opening ceremony, Lights Up. Work at Theatre Royal Stratford East, where he was Associate Director, includes: I Was Looking At The Ceiling And Then I Saw The Sky, Mad Blud, Re:Definition, The Blacks and Da Boyz. Other theatre credits include: Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (Eclipse Theatre & Young Vic), Blue/Orange, The Sound of Yellow (Young Vic), Abandonment (Rich Mix); Soyuz 40 (Theatre 503); and Wild Child (Royal Court). As a DJ, composer and former BBC 1Xtra broadcaster he has performed as Excalibah across the UK and Europe, including an appearance at the Paralympic Opening Ceremony. Matthew is a founding member of Act For Change.