Barney Norris FRSL [1] (born 1987) is a British writer. [2]
Norris was born in Chichester in West Sussex, later moving to Wiltshire where he attended Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury. He studied English at Keble College, Oxford, and creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.
After leaving university, he set up the touring Up in Arms Theatre Company [3] with the director Alice Hamilton, and worked in the theatre as assistant to Thelma Holt, Michael Frayn, Peter Gill, and Max Stafford-Clark, before becoming a full-time writer. He is an associate artist at the Watermill Theatre, [4] teaches creative writing at the University of Oxford, and reviews fiction regularly for The Guardian .
He is an amabassador for Alabaré Christian Care, a charity supporting homeless adults, young people, veterans, and those with learning disabilities based in his home city of Salisbury, and a patron of Studio Theatre Salisbury and Salisbury Literary Festival. His advocacy work on behalf of writers and writing includes currently serving as Chair of the Society of Authors' Scriptwriters Committee and as a committee members of the SoA Sustainability Committee, and as a member of the Writers Guild of Great Britain negotiating team.
Norris's early plays were produced by his company Up in Arms, usually on tour and often in partnership with other theatres. [5] Following the success of his first full-length play Visitors , [6] he began to write for other companies, and has since worked with Salisbury Playhouse, [7] the Bush Theatre, [8] Oxford Playhouse, the Arcola Theatre, the Royal and Derngate, Out of Joint, and the Bridge Theatre, among others. His first novel, Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain, was published in 2016; he has since published three other novels, including Undercurrent in 2022, and two books of non-fiction.
In February 2024, Norris was announced as the Green Party of England and Wales candidate for the Salisbury constituency at the 2024 general election. [9]
Laura Pyper is a Northern Irish actress, known for portraying Ella Dee in the second season of Hex, Jane Fairfax in Emma and Lexine Murdoch in the video game Dead Space: Extraction. She also played Lesley Howell in The Secret on ITV, which was first broadcast in April and May 2016.
Harold Owen "Gary" Wilmot, MBE is a British singer, actor, comedian, presenter, writer and director who rose to fame as a contestant on New Faces. As a television presenter, he is best known as the host of You and Me, So You Want To Be Top and Showstoppers. His West End credits include Me and My Girl, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Prince of Egypt, and Wicked.
Blue/Orange is a play written by English dramatist, Joe Penhall. The play is a sardonically comic piece which touches on race, mental illness and 21st-century British life.
Kay Adshead is a poet, playwright, theatremaker, actress and producer.
Nick Winston is an English director and choreographer working in theatre, opera and film.
Rupert Goold is an English director who works primarily in theatre. He is the artistic director of the Almeida Theatre, and was the artistic director of Headlong Theatre Company (2005–2013). Since 2010, Goold has been an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 for services to drama.
Kirsty Besterman is a British actress of the stage and screen. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art graduating in 2002.
Kathryn Pogson is an English film and stage actress. She appeared in Terry Gilliam's 1985 cult film Brazil. She won a Best Actress Drama Desk Award for her performance in the 1986 New York production of Aunt Dan and Lemon.
Robin Soans is a British actor, and a playwright specialising in verbatim and documentary plays. These plays include Across the Divide (2007); A State Affair (2000) which looked at life on a Bradford estate, produced by Out of Joint Theatre Company; The Arab Israeli Cookbook ; Talking to Terrorists ; Life After Scandal ; and Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage. Other plays include Bet Noir ; Sinners and Saints and Will and Testament.
Oladipo Agboluaje is a British-Nigerian playwright. He was born in Hackney and educated in Britain and Nigeria, studying theatre arts at the University of Benin. He later wrote a doctoral thesis at the Open University on West and South African drama.
Jonathan Paul Harvey is an English screenwriter, actor, playwright and author.
Up In Arms is a British touring theatre company from the south west of England.
Anna Francolini is an English actress.
Royal & Derngate is a theatre complex in the Cultural Quarter of Northampton, England, consisting of the Royal Theatre, Derngate Theatre and the Northampton Filmhouse. The Royal was built by theatre architect Charles J. Phipps and opened in 1884. Ninety-nine years later in 1983, Derngate, designed by RHWL, was built to the rear of the Royal. Whilst the two theatres were physically linked, they did not combine organisations until a formal merger in 1999; they are run by the Northampton Theatres Trust. The Royal Theatre, established as a producing house, has a capacity of 450 seats and since 1976 has been designated a Grade II listed building; Derngate Theatre seats a maximum of 1,200 and is a multi-purpose space in which the auditorium can be configured for a variety of events including theatre, opera, live music, dance, fashion and sports. The Northampton Filmhouse, an independent cinema built to the side of the complex, opened in 2013.
James Charles Dacre is a British theatre, opera and film director and producer. He was artistic director of Royal & Derngate Theatres in Northampton from 2013-2023 and prior to that held Associate Director roles at The New Vic Theatre, Theatre503 and The National Youth Theatre.
Sean Street is a writer, poet, broadcaster. and Britain's first Professor of Radio. He retired from full-time academic life in 2011 and was awarded an Emeritus Professorship by Bournemouth University. He continues to write and broadcast. He is also a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Jessica Swale is a British playwright, theatre director and screenwriter. Her first play, Blue Stockings, premiered at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013. It is widely performed by UK amateur companies and is also studied on the Drama GCSE syllabus. In 2016, her play Nell Gwynn won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, after it transferred from the Globe to the West End, starring Gemma Arterton as the eponymous heroine. She also wrote and directed the feature film Summerland (2020).
Visitors is a play by the English playwright Barney Norris. It premiered at the Arcola Theatre in London in March 2014, in a production directed by Alice Hamilton, produced by Norris and Hamilton's company Up In Arms. The cast included Linda Bassett, Robin Soans, Eleanor Wyld and Simon Muller.
Oluwafemi Elufowoju Jr. is a British-born, Nigerian-raised performance practitioner working across the creative industries. After Alton Kumalo, founder of Temba Theatre Company, Elufowoju is the second theatre director of African descent to establish a national touring company in the UK. Elufowoju's stage work has been seen across most key flagship production houses in the UK, and has collaborated extensively with notable creatives within the film, television and radio sectors.
The Wipers Times is a play by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, based on their 2013 BBC dramatization of the creation of The Wipers Times newspaper during World War I.