Roy Williams | |
---|---|
Born | Roy Samuel Williams Fulham, London, England |
Occupation | Playwright |
Alma mater | Rose Bruford College |
Notable awards | Alfred Fagon Award |
Literatureportal |
Roy Samuel Williams OBE FRSL is a British playwright.
Williams was born in Fulham, London, and brought up in Notting Hill, the youngest of four siblings in a single-parent home, with his mother working as a nurse after his father moved to the United States. Williams decided to work in theatre after being tutored by the writer Don Kinch when he was failing in school and attended some rehearsals in a black theatrical company that Kinch ran. After leaving school at the age of 18, Williams did various jobs, including working in McDonald's and in a props warehouse. In 1992, he took a theatre-writing degree at Rose Bruford College and has worked ever since as a writer. [1]
His first full-length play was The No Boys Cricket Club, which premiered in 1996 at Theatre Royal Stratford East. [2] Williams has done work in television, including adapting his own play Fallout, and also co-wrote the script for the 2012 British film Fast Girls .
2024 Winner Best adaptation at the BBC Audio Drama Awards for "Bess loves Porgy".
His plays include:
Death Of England:Closing time at the National Theatre in 2023
Delroy George Lindo is an English-American actor. He is the recipient of such accolades as a NAACP Image Award, a Satellite Award, and nominations for a Drama Desk Award, a Helen Hayes Award, a Tony Award, two Critics' Choice Television Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Elaine Lee is an American actress, playwright, producer, and writer, who specializes in graphic novels. She has also received recognition and awards for her work as a creator and producer of audio books and dramas.
Dennis Kelly is a British writer and producer. He has worked for theatre, television and film.
A sucker punch is a blow made without warning.
Terry Johnson is a British dramatist and director working for stage, television and film. Educated at Birmingham University, he worked as an actor from 1971 to 1975, and has been active as a playwright since the early 1980s.
Richard Anthony Bean is an English playwright.
Nicholas Verney Wright is a British dramatist.
Marion Bailey is an English actress. She is best known for her work with her partner, filmmaker Mike Leigh, including the films Meantime (1983), All or Nothing (2002), Vera Drake (2004), Mr. Turner (2014), for which she was nominated Supporting Actress of the Year by the London Film Critics' Circle, and Peterloo (2018). In 2019 and 2020, she portrayed Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in the third and fourth seasons of The Crown on Netflix, for which she won a Screen Actors Guild award winner for best ensemble in 2020 and 2021.
Winsome Pinnock FRSL is a British playwright of Jamaican heritage, who is "probably Britain's most well known black female playwright". She was described in The Guardian as "the godmother of black British playwrights".
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.
Sucker Punch is a play by the award-winning British playwright Roy Williams. It was first staged in 2010 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. The play was nominated for the Evening Standard Award and the Olivier Award for Best New Play.
Levi David Addai is a British playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for the award-winning Damilola, Our Loved Boy, the critically acclaimed Youngers and his stage plays 93.2FM and Oxford Street.
Theatre Centre is a UK-based theatre company touring new plays for young audiences aged 4 to 18. Founded in 1953 by Brian Way, the company has developed plays by writers including Lisa Evans, Noël Greig, Mike Kenny, Bryony Lavery, Leo Butler, Brendan Murray, Philip Osment, Manjinder Virk, Roy Williams and Benjamin Zephaniah. Theatre Centre is a member of Theatre for Young Audiences UK (TYA-UK), a network for makers and promoters of professional theatre for young audiences. Brian Way and Margaret Faulkes founded Theatre Centre in 1953. When they produced a shortened version of Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Man Born To Be King, the production inspired Sayers to donate £200 to help establish the company. The company's "initial aim was to provide a place where unemployed actors might meet and practise their art", Laurence Harbottle reported in 2006. "What it became was the launch pad for educational theatre in schools – and what Brian became, in the next half century, was the seminal influence on that movement, worldwide." Many of Theatre Centre's early plays were written by Brian Way himself. Way believed plays should be written for a specific age group., and "argued that the quality of performance deteriorates" when audience numbers increase. Theatre Centre productions were "presented informally on the floor of the school hall, in the round." Today, Theatre Centre shows tour to schools and venues around the country and the company has a focus on writers creating "exciting work for young audiences." Theatre Centre is a registered charity and is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.
The Alfred Fagon Award is granted annually for the best new play by a Black British playwright of Caribbean or African descent, resident in the United Kingdom. It was instituted in 1996 and first awarded in 1997, to recognise the work of Black British playwrights from the Caribbean, and named in honour of the poet and playwright, Alfred Fagon. Its scope was broadened in 2006, to include those of African descent. The award is given with the support of the Peggy Ramsay Foundation.
Alfred Fagon was a British playwright, poet and actor. He was one of the most notable Black British playwrights of the 1970s and 1980s. Fagon worked for British Rail and served in the British Army before he wrote and produced plays at theatres across the UK, including Royal Court Theatre and Hampstead Theatre.
Natasha Delia Letitia Gordon is a British playwright of Jamaican heritage. In 2018, after a career as an actor, she made her debut as a playwright with the play Nine Night, becoming the first black British female playwright to have a play staged in the West End.
Theresa Ikoko is a British playwright and screenwriter of Nigerian descent. Her play Girls, about three girls abducted by terrorists in northern Nigeria, won the Alfred Fagon Award and other awards.
Charlene James is a British playwright and screenwriter. She won substantial acclaim for her play Cuttin' It, which addresses the issue of female genital mutilation in Britain, for which she won numerous awards.
Juliet Gilkes Romero is a writer for stage and screen.
Death of England is a trilogy of plays by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams.