Emerging writers from underprivileged backgrounds are being offered the chance to live rent-free in London, under a new theatre scheme backed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
The scheme, called Writers’ Block, aims to address the cost of London accommodation for playwrights starting out. Waller-Bridge has donated a flat for use by emerging writers and made what has been described as a generous financial contribution to the scheme. Writers will live in the flat rent-free, covering only the cost of bills during their stay.
The scheme is backed by a number of leading figures from theatre and film, including Jack Thorne, co-creator of Adolescence and writer of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Waller-Bridge’s partner Martin McDonagh, writer and director of The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. It has also received support from playwright and screenwriter James Graham, Happy Valley creator Sally Wainwright, and The Crown’s Peter Morgan.
Thorne said he was lucky when starting out, as his brother in Croydon put him up, rather selflessly, for five years before he moved to Luton. For many writers, he said, the need for a roof makes writing impossible, which is why the pilot is so important: if you are from privilege, your biggest problem is what to fill a page with, but if you are not, so much of the struggle is about the need to survive.
Graham said the industry’s pursuit of representation is still letting down the biggest area of under-representation of all, which is class. When he first made it to London, he slept on friends’ floors and worked in call centres and bars while he wrote. Every spare room a scheme like this can give to writers starting out in London, he said, not only helps them write but saves them from giving up completely: “We don’t need grand gestures, just someone to open a door and help us keep going.”
Writers’ Block is an evolution of the Adopt a Playwright Award, launched in 2008 to support writers from disadvantaged backgrounds by offering affordable accommodation in London for meetings, rehearsals, performances and career opportunities. Both schemes were created by Sofie Mason and Diana Jervis-Read, founders of The Offies, the Off West End Theatre Awards. So far, 55 writers have received support through the Adopt a Playwright scheme.
Mason and Jervis-Read highlighted research from the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and the Sutton Trust showing that only 16 per cent of people working in the creative industries come from working-class backgrounds. Writers’ Block is delivered in partnership with Omnibus Theatre in Clapham and connects playwrights with hosts who have a spare room or property and are willing to offer it at dramatically reduced rates. Irish actor Alan Turkington, known for Heartstopper, has taken part by offering a room in his Camberwell flat, saying he was lucky to afford a flat in the late 90s and has tried to pay some of that privilege forward, especially now when rents are abhorrently high.
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