Where does the National send up-and-coming playwrights to have their ideas honed, pulled apart, rebuilt – and turned into dramatic dynamite? Our writer is granted rare access to the hallowed confines of ‘the Studio’
It has been called “the heartbeat” of the National Theatre. Housed in a brutalist building on London’s South Bank, the Studio was set up in 1984 as a five-year experiment, the aim being to develop new work away from the glare of the public. “Until we started the Studio,” said Peter Gill, its founding director, “there was a sense that the National was not for the likes of the new writer.”
Forty years on, the Studio – which now houses the New Work department – has been behind many of the National’s hits. It was here in this building that the team honed three of the four shows up for best play at this year’s Olivier awards: Till the Stars Come Down by Beth Steel, The Motive and the Cue by Jack Thorne, and James Graham’s prize-winning Dear England. At the entrance, a chalkboard grid reels off writers on attachment and artists in workshops. It’s a lab, a haven, a place where questions can be asked and ambitions expanded, with the time and space they need.
