Nell Leyshon

Last updated

Nell Leyshon is a British writer whose work alternates between prose, stage and radio drama. She was born and grew up in Somerset, and spent half of her childhood in Glastonbury, and the other half in a small farming village on the edge of the Somerset Levels. She had a mixed education, and ended up attending art college for a year before moving to London. A first career culminated in working as a Production Assistant then Producer in TV commercials for directors including Ridley and Tony Scott. She gave it up to spend a year in Spain with her boyfriend Dominic, who remains her partner. She returned pregnant. She attended the University of Southampton as a mature student. Only after the birth of her second son in 1995 she started to write seriously. [1]

Contents

Having taught adult students wanting to return to education when her children where young, she later decided to use her teaching skills to work with marginalised communities, including recovering addicts, mental health service users, gypsies and, in Labrador, aboriginal peoples. She taught and mentored creative writing and performance, focusing on developing skills and self-esteem, and, always, the writer's own original voice. In 2018 she founded The Outsiders Project a company giving voice to the unheard.

She spent 3 years on the Management Committee for the Society of Authors, [2] and is on the Advisory Board of the Alpine Fellowship. [3] In 2018 she became a trustee of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, [4] and is now Deputy Chair underneath Margaret Caseley-Hayford.

Literary work

Prose

In May 2004, her first novel, Black Dirt, was published by Picador and was long-listed for the Orange Prize and runner up for the Commonwealth Prize.

in May 2012, her third novel, The Colour of Milk, was published by Penguin. It was translated to multiple languages, winning the Prix Interallié in France where it was also shortlisted for the Prix Femina, [5] and voted the book of the year in Spain. [6] In 2015 her most recent novel, Memoirs of a Dipper, was published.

Radio dramas

Her first radio play, Milk, won the Richard Imison Award. [7] Her second drama War Bride was runner up for the Meyer Whitworth Award. [8]

Subsequent radio plays include Glass Eels, Soldier Boy, Writing The Century and Jess, a Woman's Hour drama about child mental health for Children in Need.

Theatre

In 2005 her play, Comfort me with Apples, won an Evening Standard Theatre Award for most promising playwright, was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award and was shortlisted for Susan Smith Blackburn Award

She adapted Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now for the Lyceum, Sheffield which later transferred to the Lyric, Hammersmith. In 2010 her play Bedlam was the first written by a woman to be performed at Shakespeare's Globe.

She has also written plays for young people for National Theatre Connections, The Beauty Manifesto and Terra [9] which was a dance theatre piece with choreography by Anthony Missem. She also wrote for Royal Theatre Plymouth and the play, The Word, for RADA Elders group. [10]

Other projects

In 2014 Leyshon wrote her first libretto, The River Keeper, for Streetwise Opera, [11] a charity which works with homeless people.

In 2018 she performed her one-woman show, Three Letters, at the Royal Shakespeare Company, [12] then at Edinburgh Fringe where it was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. [13]

The Outsiders Project

In 2018 Leyshon founded The Outsiders Project, a company that gives voice to the unheard and marginalised through working with outsider artists and supporting their creativity. They work with members of the community of Boscombe, and the work is shown locally then shared with a wider world. The work is designed to develop authentic voices and is of exceptional quality.

Their vision is to show that people sidelined from society can write, perform and create work at the highest level. They support the outsider community to push boundaries to prove they can create work of outstanding quality and worth.

The Outsiders Project has produced three works for the stage; Vodka Hunters, Secret Voices and The Truth About Men, all three as part of BEAF – Bournemouth Emerging Arts Fringe Festival 2018 and 2019.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic they launched the Tattoo Project [14] an online initiative to gather, tell stories and find new outsider artists.

Teaching

Leyshon has been teaching for 27 years, but spent the last 17 years specialising in outsider voices. She has worked extensively with the recovery community in prisons and mental health settings. She has also worked with the Gypsy community, and has led many partnership courses for Arvon Foundation. [15]

She has started The Lockdown Workshops a series of workshops to share her approach to writing during the lockdown.

Selected work

Novels

Radio Dramas

Theatre

Personal life

Nell lives in Dorset with her partner Dominic. She has two sons.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

Siân Phillips Welsh actress

Dame Jane Elizabeth Ailwên Phillips,, known professionally as Siân Phillips, is a Welsh actress. She has performed the title roles in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and G. B. Shaw's Saint Joan.

Glass Eels is a play written by Nell Leyshon, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2003. The play has also been performed on stage at the Hampstead Theatre, it is the second part of a planned quartet of Somerset plays covering the four seasons the first being the award winning Comfort Me with Apples.

Glyn Maxwell

Glyn Maxwell is a British poet, playwright, novelist, librettist, and lecturer.

Imelda Staunton English actress and singer

Imelda Mary Philomena Bernadette Staunton, is an English actress and singer. After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Staunton began her career in repertory theatre in the 1970s before appearing in various theatre productions in the United Kingdom.

Amanda Root is an English stage and screen actress and a former voice actress for children's programmes.

Josette Patricia Simon is a British actress from Leicester of Antiguan descent. She trained for the stage at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

Harriet Walter British actress

Dame Harriet Mary Walter is an English stage and screen actress. Her film appearances include Sense and Sensibility (1995), The Governess (1998), Villa des Roses (2002), Atonement (2007) and Man Up (2015). On television she starred as Natalie Chandler in the ITV drama series Law & Order: UK (2009–14), as Lady Prudence Shackleton in four episodes of Downton Abbey (2013–15), and as Clementine Churchill in The Crown (2016). She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2011 for services to drama.

Lucy Renee Speed is an English actress best known for her television roles as Natalie Evans in the BBC One soap opera EastEnders, and as DS Stevie Moss in the ITV1 police drama series The Bill.

Mary Barbara Jefford, OBE was a British actress, best known for her theatrical performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Old Vic and the National Theatre and her role as Molly Bloom in the 1967 film of James Joyce's Ulysses.

Leila Birch is an English actress, known for portraying Teresa di Marco in EastEnders.

Noma Dumezweni British actress

Noma Dumezweni is a British actress. In 2006, she won an Olivier Award for her role in A Raisin in the Sun. She starred as Hermione Granger in the original West End and Broadway runs of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which garnered her a second Laurence Olivier Award and a Tony Award nomination.

Amy Rosenthal is a British playwright from Muswell Hill, London. She is a recipient of The Sunday Times Drama Award.

Kate Clanchy is a Scottish poet, freelance writer and teacher.

Sarah Woodward is a British actress. She won the Olivier Award for best performance in a supporting role in 1998 for her role in Tom & Clem by Stephen Churchett., directed by Richard Wilson, and was nominated for a Tony Award in 2000 for her role in the Donmar Warehouse production of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing. opposite Jennifer Ehle and Stephen Dillane, directed by David Levaux. She is the daughter of actor Edward Woodward and his first wife, actress Venetia Barrett, sister of actor Tim Woodward, actor, voice artist, and screenwriter Peter Woodward, and half-sister to actress Emily Woodward, whose mother is actress Michele Dotrice. She is married to actor Patrick Toomey. They have two daughters and live in London.

Rose Leslie British actress

Rose Eleanor Arbuthnot-Leslie is an actress. After winning a for Best Acting Performance for her role in New Town, she rose to fame as Gwen Dawson in the ITV drama series Downton Abbey and as Ygritte in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones. She starred as Maia Rindell for three seasons of the CBS All Access legal and political drama The Good Fight.

Lucy Bailey British theatre director

Lucy Bailey is a British theatre director, known for productions such as Baby Doll at Britain's National Theatre and a notorious Titus Andronicus which had many members of the audience fainting. Bailey founded the Gogmagogs theatre-music group (1995–2006) and was Artistic Director and joint founder of the Print Room theatre in West London (2010-2012). She has worked extensively with Bunny Christie and other leading stage designers, including her husband William Dudley.

Philippa Bennett-Warner is a British actress.

The BBC Audio Drama Awards is an awards ceremony created by BBC Radio to recognise excellence in the radio industry, in particular in audio dramas. The first awards were presented in 2012 and the ceremony has been located at BBC Radio's home Radio Theatre, Broadcasting House.

Malika Booker is a British writer, poet and multi-disciplinary artist, who is considered "a pioneer of the present spoken word movement" in the UK. Her writing spans different genres of storytelling, including poetry, theatre, monologue, installation and education, and her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies. Organizations for which she has worked include Arts Council England, the BBC, British Council, Wellcome Trust, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Arvon, and Hampton Court Palace.

Grace Saif British actress

Grace Saif is a British actress known for playing Ani Achola in 13 Reasons Why.

References

  1. ↑ Spencer, Charles (13 January 2007). "Playwright who ploughs her own furrow". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN   0307-1235 . Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  2. ↑ "Scriptwriters Group | The Society of Authors". www.societyofauthors.org. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  3. ↑ "Advisory Board". The Alpine Fellowship. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  4. ↑ "About us". Shakespeare's Globe. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  5. ↑ "THE COLOUR OF MILK shortlisted for the Prix Femina Etranger | United Agents". www.unitedagents.co.uk. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  6. ↑ Camacho, Isabel Cristina Cuesta (28 December 2014). "'Del color de la leche', mejor Novela según los libreros de Madrid". El País (in Spanish). ISSN   1134-6582 . Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  7. ↑ "Radio Drama Previous Winners | Society of Authors - Protecting the rights and furthering the interests of authors". 9 May 2013. Archived from the original on 9 May 2013. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  8. ↑ Spencer, Charles (13 January 2007). "Playwright who ploughs her own furrow". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN   0307-1235 . Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  9. ↑ "Connections Plays 2019 | terra/earth by Nell Leyshon | National Theatre". www.nationaltheatre.org.uk. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  10. ↑ Fabrique. "The Words Will Come: a new anthology from the RADA Elders Company – RADA". www.rada.ac.uk. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  11. ↑ "The River Keeper". Streetwise Opera. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  12. ↑ "Latest Press Releases | Royal Shakespeare Company". www.rsc.org.uk. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  13. ↑ "BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3, Three Letters". BBC. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  14. ↑ "Tattoos". Mysite 1. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  15. ↑ "Nell Leyshon". Arvon. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.