What defines playwriting in the 2020s and who are the emerging names to watch? The casual consensus is that new writing is in crisis – a recent report assessing the impact of the pandemic noted a 30 per cent drop in the number of new plays performed from 2019-2023. Yet 70 years on from the Royal Court’s premiere of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger – which revolutionised the post-war playwriting scene – it’s time to celebrate that, for all the challenges, British playwriting is in surprisingly good health.
The six playwrights I’ve chosen are some of the most exciting “new kids” on the block. (I say “kids”. This is actually the tail-end of the Millennial cohort.) But each of these names has arrived amid – or in the wake – of the pandemic, and are now defining the times we’re all living through.
As David Byrne, artistic director of the Royal Court, points out, this wave of younger Britons has been battered beyond belief: “They’ve known nothing but societal unrest, fracture, financial crashes, Brexit, Trump and social movements that have energised and exhausted people in equal measure. The world is changing at such a rapid rate that people are feeling out of control. That does come through in the writing.”
You’d expect them all to be moaning or angrily tub-thumping. But these playwrights are characterised by their intelligence, nuance and often humour, and display a matching charm and thoughtfulness in their conversation. Far from being simplistically wedded to identity politics, they’re delving into group experiences in intricate, subtle, compassionate ways.