The regional voice
Morna Pearson, 27, was working in an Edinburgh bookshop 'for the minimum wage' having just graduated in drama and theatre arts from Queen Margaret University, when she received the call commissioning her to write a full-length play for Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre. Distracted went on to awe critics, be nominated for best new play in the Critics' Award for Theatre in Scotland awards, and to win the 2007 Meyer-Whitworth award.
Growing up in Elgin, north east Scotland, Pearson loved drama at school but found little that reflected the humour or voices of her region, which prompted her to try writing herself. 'I suppose it was a question of not feeling satisfied, wanting to make my own drama,' she says. Given the seam of dark comedy running through her work, it's not surprising to hear that her influences include Beckett and Sartre but also Steve Coogan and Chris Morris. 'I go for things that aren't supposed to be funny,' she says. 'There's a lot of sexual jokes, a lot of stuff I wouldn't want my granny to see. But I like characters who have a kind of lack, where it's easy to find comedy in their story, but there's a heart to it as well.'
With a new commission for the Traverse in progress, another for the English touring company Paines Plough and a half-hour drama for BBC Radio Scotland in the works, it can't be too long before she can give up the day job altogether.
Stephanie Merritt
Al Smith
The experimenter
Getting your drunk friends to suggest 'interesting historical figures' doesn't sound like a useful creative exercise, but Al Smith swears this is how his first play, Chalk, got started. Taking his friends' character suggestions, he 'tried to find a way to tie them together' and thus kick-started his unexpected career as a writer.
Since Chalk, the 25-year-old has twice won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award - for Enola at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006 and this year for Radio (Fringe then London's Soho Theatre) - and is now writing for the BBC, as well as finishing another play - part of his 'Apollo trilogy' about the space programme - Under a Red Moon. Writing for TV rather than stage requires, he says, 'a different muscle', but 'so long as you're telling a story, the medium doesn't matter'.
He's refreshingly practical about writing, describing it as 'just pulling stuff apart and putting it back together' and his next project is also founded on a friend's suggestion of a historical figure. Playing next year at the Bush Theatre, its subject is Evariste Galois, a French physicist and mathematician who, he enthuses, 'was shot in a duel over a girl'.
Hermione Buckley-Hoby
Carrie Cracknell and Natalie Abrahami
The collaborators
One buzzword crops up in almost every sentence that Abrahami, 26, and Cracknell, 27, speak. Having been appointed as the Gate Theatre's first joint artistic directors in March 2007, it's perhaps no surprise that 'collaboration' has become their catchphrase. Cracknell describes the pair as having had an 'ongoing dialogue about the kind of theatre we're interested in seeing and making', prompting them to apply jointly for the post.
Despite its modest size, the theatre in Notting Hill has a well-deserved reputation as a springboard for theatrical talent; with Thea Sharrock and Erica Whyman among their predecessors, Cracknell and Abrahami form its third generation of female directors. While Abrahami describes British theatre as 'quite an enlightened industry', the pair are none the less grateful that their predecessors 'have fought a lot of battles in terms of being listened to rather than looked at'.
Their appetite for international voices and, yes, collaboration at every step means that their productions have been both listened to and looked at. The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents formed a bold debut and their next venture, a dance piece called I Am Falling, opens early next year. Cracknell says that 'it's a real departure to be making dance work in a pub theatre' and the 'tiny, magical space' will certainly allow audiences to see dancers incredibly close up. 'I think in a world where so much is received and downloaded, the nature of live performance is suddenly much more exciting - to see living people breathing!'
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