An introduction to playwriting

The Middle Child Writers’ Group offers a free introduction to playwriting, led by our associate artist and Hull-based writer, Tom Wells.

You don’t need to have written anything before, you just need to have a few good stories to tell – funny stories, sad stories, tough stories, tender stories – stories we’re eager to see on Hull stages.

You’ll take part in a series of five weekly workshops, in-person at our Theatre Library, focused around finding your voice as a playwright.

You will then begin work on a short scene, which will receive feedback from Tom and Middle Child literary manager, Matthew May. These will then be performed in public by professional actors, script-in-hand, at Fresh Ink: Hull Playwriting Festival 2025.

The next Writers’ Group will meet on the following dates in 2025, from 6-8pm, at the Middle Child Theatre Library in Hull’s Old Town.

  • Wednesday 22 January
  • Wednesday 29 January
  • Wednesday 5 February
  • Wednesday 12 February
  • Wednesday 19 February
Who can apply

The group is open to any individual who is:

      • A current resident local to Hull and the East Riding with a HU postcode;

      • Over the age of 18;

      • Yet to have had a play performed of more than 60 minutes in length.

How to apply

Applications closed at midday on 26 November 2024.

See also

“In two years, I’ve gone from scraping together the confidence to apply for the Middle Child Writers’ Group to having work commissioned with them for the first time.

“A single parent in my 30s, I really thought I’d missed any kind of boat with writing and I wasn’t sure I had any ideas – or knew how to write them if I did.

“It’s not an overstatement to say the entire experience, from the first group session to now, has been transformative for me.”

Hannah Scorer

Writers’ Group (2019); Out Loud (2020); Pattie Breadcake: Into the Pantoverse (2020); Out Loud (2023); Fresh Ink: Hull Playwriting Festival (2024)

About Tom Wells

Tom Wells is a Hull-based playwright, whose work includes Drip (Boundless), Broken Biscuits (Paines Plough and Live Theatre), Folk (Birmingham Rep, Hull Truck Theatre and Watford Palace Theatre) and Jumpers for Goalposts (Paines Plough). Middle Child have also adapted two of Tom’s previous Lyric Hammersmith pantomime scripts: Dick Whittington (2016) and Cinderella (2017).

Tom is an associate artist of Middle Child and has led the Writers’ Group since it launched in 2018.

“Middle Child has had a monumental impact on my career and has helped shaped me into the confident writer that I am today.

“They are incredibly valuable to the city of Hull and put on not only entertaining productions, but diverse ones too, which as a person of colour myself, was inspiring to see.

“Since working alongside Middle Child, I have secured more opportunities to develop my writing and the team at Middle Child believed in me before I believed in myself – for that I am eternally grateful.”

Jay Mitra

Writers’ Group (2019); Concrete Retreat (2019); we used to be closer than this (2021)