International Playwriting Festival
Encyclopedia
The International Playwriting Festival was founded in 1986 by Steve Gooch and Ted Craig
Ted Craig
Ted Craig FRSA is an Australian-born theatre director who is best known as the artistic director of the Warehouse Theatre, South London, England.Craig was born and educated in Melbourne, Australia...

 and is hosted by the new playwriting theatre, Warehouse Theatre
Warehouse Theatre
The Warehouse Theatre is a professional producing theatre with one hundred seats in the centre of the London Borough of Croydon, south London, England based in an oak-beamed former cement Victorian warehouse...

, South London
South London
South London is the southern part of London, England, United Kingdom.According to the 2011 official Boundary Commission for England definition, South London includes the London boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Southwark, Sutton and...

. It is held in two parts: the first is a competition with entries accepted from all over the world, which are judged by a panel of distinguished theatre practitioners. The second is a showcase of the selected plays at the Warehouse Theatre each November.

The IPF has two international partners - Extra Candoni , an association of seven theatre companies across Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, and Theatro Ena, Nicosia
Nicosia
Nicosia from , known locally as Lefkosia , is the capital and largest city in Cyprus, as well as its main business center. Nicosia is the only divided capital in the world, with the southern and the northern portions divided by a Green Line...

 representing Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 new writing. There are also contributions of the best new writing from the Warehouse Writers Workshop and from students from the BRIT School
BRIT School
The London School for Performing Arts & Technology is a British school located in Selhurst, Croydon, in London, England, with a mandate to provide education and vocational training for the performing arts, media, art and design and the technologies that make performance possible...

 - the Performing Arts and Technology School.
Writing about the IPF, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

said: "Doing playwrights and the theatre at large a fine service."

Writers discovered by the IPF include:
  • Mark Norfolk - His debut play, Knock Down Ginger was produced at the Warehouse Theatre in June 2002 (the education project attached to the play was nominated for the Arts Council England
    Arts Council England
    Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...

    ’s Eclipse award for combating racism through theatre). Knock Down Ginger was also showcased in Urbino
    Urbino
    Urbino is a walled city in the Marche region of Italy, south-west of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482...

    , Italy the same year. His second play Wrong Place was produced by the Soho Theatre
    Soho Theatre
    Soho Theatre is a theatre in the eponymous Soho district of the City of Westminster. It presents new works of theatre, together with comedy and cabaret....

     in October 2003.
  • Maggie Neville – The Shagaround was premièred at the Premio Candoni Arta Terme 2001 and co-produced by the Warehouse Theatre Company and the Nuffield Theatre
    Nuffield Theatre
    Nuffield Theatre may refer to:* The Nuffield Theatre at the Lancaster University* The Nuffield Theatre at the University of Southampton...

    , Southampton
    Southampton
    Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...

     playing at the Nuffield Theatre, Ashcroft Theatre
    Ashcroft Theatre
    The Ashcroft Theatre is a theatre located within the Fairfield Halls, Croydon, South London. The theatre was named after Croydon-born Dame Peggy Ashcroft and is a proscenium theatre with a stepped auditorium. The mural on its fire curtain is by the artist Henry Bird. A variety of productions are...

    , Soho Theatre and Brighton Theatre Royal.
  • Roumen Shomov – The Dove was premièred at the Warehouse Theatre April 2000 and was also showcased at the Premio Candoni Arta Terme in the same year. It went on to be produced in Bulgaria
    Bulgaria
    Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

     at The State Theatre, Yambol
    Yambol
    Yambol is a city in southeastern Bulgaria, an administrative centre of Yambol Province. It lies on both banks of the Tundzha river in the historical region of Thrace. As of February 2011, the town has a population of 72,843 inhabitants. It is occasionally spelt 'Jambol'.The administrative centres...

     and State Satirical Theatre, Sofia
    Sofia
    Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...

    .
  • Dominic McHale – The Resurrectionists was co-produced by the Bolton
    Bolton
    Bolton is a town in Greater Manchester, in the North West of England. Close to the West Pennine Moors, it is north west of the city of Manchester. Bolton is surrounded by several smaller towns and villages which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, of which Bolton is the...

     Octagon Theatre and the Warehouse Theatre in 1998.
  • Richard Vincent
    Richard Vincent (playwright)
    Richard Vincent is an English playwright, theatre director and screenwriter.-Life:Vincent trained as an actor at the Drama Centre, London.His first play, Off the Bone, was produced at the Courtyard Theatre in 1994....

     – Real Estate was produced in Italy by Il Centro per la Drammaturgia Contemporanea ‘H’ December 1999, Quartieri dell’Arte and Festival delle Ville Tuscolane July 2001 and Teatro Colosseo December 2001 and has since been developed as a screenplay. Skin Deep was produced at the Warehouse Theatre May 2002. He has since written for the BBC
    BBC
    The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

    ’s Casualty
    Casualty (TV series)
    Casualty, stylised as Casual+y, is a British weekly television show broadcast on BBC One, and the longest-running emergency medical drama television series in the world. Created by Jeremy Brock and Paul Unwin, it was first broadcast on 6 September 1986, and transmitted in the UK on BBC One. The...

    and several screenplays for the Film Council
  • Kevin Hood (Silent Witness
    Silent Witness
    Silent Witness is a BBC crime thriller series focusing on a team of forensic pathology experts and their investigations into various crimes. First broadcast in February 1996, the series is still airing to the present day, with a fifteenth series expected to air in January 2012. The series was...

    TV series and the film Becoming Jane
    Becoming Jane
    Becoming Jane is a 2007 historical film directed by Julian Jarrold. It is inspired by the early life of author Jane Austen , and her posited relationship with Thomas Langlois Lefroy . Also appearing are Julie Walters, James Cromwell and Maggie Smith...

    ).
  • Guy Jenkin (Drop The Dead Donkey
    Drop the Dead Donkey
    - Major characters :* Gus Hedges — The unctuous Chief Executive of the company, and yes-man to Sir Roysten Merchant. A management stereotype, complete with clichés and clumsy metaphors, he swiftly transforms GlobeLink from a serious news network to a ratings-chasing tabloid channel...

    )
  • Peter Moffat (North Square & Cambridge Spies)


The Festival's patrons are Thelma Holt
Thelma Holt
Thelma Holt, is a British theatre producer and former actress.After a successful career as an actress, in partnership with Charles Marowitz, Thelma founded the Open Space Theatre in Tottenham Court Road, London, which became the forerunner of the London fringe. In 1977, joined The Round House in...

 CBE and Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

 CBE. Its producers are Evita Bier and Ted Craig
Ted Craig
Ted Craig FRSA is an Australian-born theatre director who is best known as the artistic director of the Warehouse Theatre, South London, England.Craig was born and educated in Melbourne, Australia...

and the administrator is Rose Marie Vernon.
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