Brian Way Writers’ Room

Future Makers Collaborations //

Bringing together emerging and established playwrights with young people and artists.

The Brian Way Writers’ Room is Theatre Centre’s commitment to investing in playwrights and ensuring that bold, urgent stories continue to be made for and with young audiences and is where all of Theatre Centre’s specialist writer development and commissioning work lives.

Named in honour of Theatre Centre's visionary co-founder, the Writers’ Room serves as a home for all aspects of Theatre Centre’s writer development work. It brings together emerging and established playwrights, young writers, poets, and artists, ensuring that Theatre Centre remains a space for radical storytelling shaped by the voices of young people today and tomorrow.

A strand of this work is for our Resident Writers to each receive a fee to develop ideas for new plays. Over six to twelve months, they will collaborate with young people in schools and community spaces across the UK, embedding young voices into the creative process. Their play pitches, informed by the ideas, perspectives, and lived experiences of young people, will be considered for commission for Theatre Centre’s future touring productions.

Further strands of the Brian Way Writers’ Room will be announced, continuing Theatre Centre’s commitment to developing and championing the next generation of theatre-makers.

“one of the most creatively fulfilling experiences I’ve ever had.”

— Katie Redford (writer of Wish You Weren't Here)

“A joyous rehearsal room and combined dramaturgical rigour with ambitious vision.”

— Mohamed Zain Dada (writer of Dizzy)

“to be developing the work in rooms with such inquisitive, playful minds has been a joy.”

— Debris Stevenson (writer of My Brother's a Genius)

Current Resident Writers

Debris Stevenson is a playwright, Grime-poet, multi-disciplinary artist, neurodivergent academic and professional raver whose work explores the intersectional, unexpected, and unjust.
Read Debris’ full bio here.

Find out about Debris’ upcoming show, My Brother’s a Genius.

Zia Ahmed is a writer from north-west London a former roundhouse slam champion, and a recipient of the Royal Court Theatre Jerwood New Playwrights Programme 2021.
Read Zia’s full bio here.