Playwrights to Watch: The best young British playwrights of the moment

Every era has its literary form of choice, the vehicle through which the young, idealistic or vociferous express social and political gripes, reflect the zeitgeist or explore the human condition. The last few years have been energetic proof that, since the turn of the century, the play has been the thing, with an extraordinary resurgence in writing for the theatre which has made the London scene its most exciting in years.

There's something particularly ballsy about a new play. It takes an extra layer of gumption to convince a whole theatre team your work is worth the bother, and the investment.

We’ve already had one tranche of great new writing for the theatre produced through the Noughties and into the 2010s. It includes, to name but a few, Bola Agbaje’s Gone Too Far, Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Her Naked Skin (the first original work by a living woman playwright on the National’s main stage), the meteoric rise of Nick Payne, Polly Stenham’s That Face, James Graham’s Tory Boyz and Laura Wade’s Posh.

The onslaught of fresh and exciting new work looks set to continue; here then are the up and coming playwrights we’ll be keeping our eye on in 2014 and beyond.

Alice Birch

The youngest playwright at the RSC’s Midsummer Mischief festival this year, Birch’s piece Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again was one of several responses to the brief ‘Well-behaved women seldom make history.’ Asked why anyone should go and see it, she told the RSC, “ Because it is an anarchic, show-off of a play, that would really love to be seen.”

With a stash of awards under her belt, including the prestigious George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright, and Arts Award for Playwriting 2014, Birch will be spending time on her new play Little Light - Orange Tree will play host to this in 2015. 

The Guardian called her full-length debut Many Moons “akin to looking at the sun in eclipse, golden at the edges, black within.” She lays characters bare with no patience for the sentimental, digging deep into subjects like child abuse or the bitter impossibility of women’s sexual revolution. She’s known for her disarming combination of humour and bitingly tense relationships.

Rory Mullarkey

Mullarkey co-won the George Devine Award with Alice Birch for his   The Wolf From the Door; Royal Court Theatre will be showing the play in September (as the play is also winner of the Royal Court's Pinter Commission). But the two share little beyond youth and a stack of prizes. Mullarkey was the youngest playwright to have work performed on the main stage of the Royal Exchange Theatre, with his 2013 critically acclaimed play Cannibals. 

The young playwright has been involved with the Royal Court Theatre for several years, translating Russian-language works for its international projects.

His Eastern European travels give his work a contemporary political edge, with Cannibals set in a remote post-Soviet region, before its Eastern European bride is bundled in a car boot to a Russian-speaking Manchester. A new project in 2013 sent him off to Russia to research conscription of young soldiers, but he returned with no info and branded a spy.

The Guardian said of Cannibals, ‘not an easy play to watch, or even a particularly easy play to like. But it could be one of the most provocative, original and disturbing debuts’.

Kieran Hurley

Prolific Scotsman Kieran Hurley, a writer and performer, is the toast of Scotland for his caustic plays. Hurley never went to drama school, but often performs in his own works. His techno-infused play Beats, emerging at the Edinburgh Festival in 2012 and Winner of Best New Play at the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland 2012, includes several characters all played by Hurley himself. This and other works have appeared at the Soho Theatre, and Beats transferred to the Bush Theatre.

In Beats, Hurley celebrates the potency of mass groups and free imagination, but questions the sufficiency of such groups that make nothing of that potency. The play was based around the 1994 Criminal Justice Act legislation which outlawed raves.

Hurley is decidedly political, rooted in Scottishness, and a member of the National Collective of artists for the yes vote.

Moses Raine

Raine's rise seems inevitable when considering the literary stock from whence he came - brother of fellow playwright Nina Raine, son of poet and critic Craig Raine and great nephew of Boris Pasternak, author of Doctor Zhivago. But dyslexia almost kept him a home story-teller, albeit if a brilliant one, until his mother pushed him to write down ideas. 

Raine's The Survival Handbook, his first play, was shortlisted for the prestigious Verity Bargate award. He and his sister Nina have co-written several works, including the last episode of BBC1's Mistresses, and Nina directed Moses Raine's Donkey Heart at the Old Red Lion earlier this year. A play about the swelling tensions and distrust in a family apartment in Moscow, it taps into the playwright's impressions after a trip to Russia.

Eve Leigh

A Cambridge graduate with more European inclinations is Eve Leigh, director of a European premiere of Lisa Kron’s recent play Well at Trafalgar Studios, and its transfer to the Apollo Theatre in 2008.

Leigh is an enterprising sort, co-founding and co-directing London’s All Change festival in October, exploring the influence and adventures of global and local theatre. This year’s festival links with New York and Iceland.

After involvement with National Theatre and Royal Court programmes, her play Stone Face about a feral child and her doctors, was shortlisted for the Kings Cross Award 2013. Look out for her new work, Enough, with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s Young REP.

Chris Urch

The recent play by Chris Urch, Land of Our Fathers, began at Theatre 503 in 2013, and will transfer to Trafalgar Studios this September. The play depicts six Welsh miners trapped after a collapse, at first held together by camaraderie, but, Michael Billington warns, the play “becomes an acute study of disgrace under pressure.”

From a mining family, Urch had his background in mind when a few Welsh male voice choir videos on Youtube pushed him to create, and Land of Our Fathers is scattered with songs. He’s a character man, coming at stories through how he would act them, and creating voices he recognises from experience.

Urch has written with the National Theatre, and as resident writer at Theatre 503 (a hotbed of new talent). 2013 saw him win the Bruntwood Award Judges Prize for The Rolling Stone - in development at the Royal Exchange Theatre.

Want to read more? Members enjoy full access to all Culture Whisper's arts previews, exclusives and features. Click here to take our cultural quiz and get a month's free trial.