SELLL's Zoe Cooper appointed Writer-in-Residence to the Royal Shakespeare Company
We are delighted to announce that our own Dr Zoe Cooper, Senior Lecturer in Theatre Script, will be joining North-East based Stewart Pringle as writers-in-residence at the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC).
23 October 2024
Dr Zoe Cooper and Stuart Pringle join the RSC in Autumn 2024
Dr Zoe Cooper, Senior Lecturer in Theatre Script in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, will be joined by North-East born Stewart Pringle. They will lead the New Works team at the RSC and develop their own writing. Their work with the team will include mentoring playwrights, developing new ideas and establishing new ways of supporting writers. Both Zoe and Stewart will take up their new roles in November.
Dr Cooper said: “I am so thrilled to be coming to the RSC alongside the brilliant Stewart Pringle. To be given the opportunity to call somewhere home as a playwright is really rare. Rarer still in a theatre that has such a rich history and as it starts to write its next exciting chapter. I am greatly looking forward to being part of a team that I know will help lots of other writers feel like the Company can be a home for them too. Can’t wait!”
Dr Cooper’s plays include Northanger Abbey, inspired by the Austen novel, (Orange Tree Theatre, Bolton Octagon, TBTL and SJT), an adaptation of David Almond’s novel A Song for Ella Grey (Pilot/Northern Stage and touring), Out of Water (Orange Tree) and Jess and Joe Forever (Orange Tree, touring and Traverse).
She has been shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award, the Women’s Playwriting Prize and was the winner of the Off West End Most Promising Playwright Award. Alongside her work as a playwright, she has a background in dramaturgy and literary management. Zoe will be seconded from her role at Newcastle University, where she has worked for the last eight years after completing her PhD.
