Long-Form Groups

In addition to our eight week Introductory Writers’ Groups, we run one long-form group a year for up to 10 writers who meet weekly for 6 to 9 months, led by a ground-breaking playwright.

Writers for the group are drawn from our wider knowledge of current playwriting work in the UK and beyond, our own introductory groups and the reading and watching that the theatre undertakes.

The group provides a space for writers to be with their peers, to support and push each other in turn, and to have regular access to a leading playwright’s brain and to the artistic staff at the Royal Court. They are not intended to be a how-to-write ‘course’. The writers we select can already write. It’s an opportunity to develop their craft, see lots of theatre, read lots of plays they haven’t read before (and talk endlessly about them). Writers on the long-form group write a full-length play and go through a gentle but rigorous drafting process shared with the group.

More broadly, the writers in the long-form group are encouraged to think about what it is to be an artist in this time, and consider how to best deploy their skills and powers as playwrights, whilst staying sane and thriving.

Artists we have worked with to lead previous long-form groups are Alice Birch, Leo Butler, EV Crowe and Alistair McDowall.

In addition to our introductory and long-form writing groups, we occasionally run one-off groups that tend to start with a question or impulse to hold a group from a particular playwright or artist, recent examples include Simon Stephens and Mark Ravenhill.

If you’d like us to come and see your work you can email literary@royalcourttheatre.com and, although we can’t see everything, we will respond and come along where we can.