News / theatre
Playwriting workshop will explore ‘defining issue of our time’
An associate playwright to the Royal Court is visiting Bristol to lead a workshop dedicated to storytelling around climate change at the Watershed.
Nina Segal is collaborating with tiata fahodzi, the UK’s leading British African heritage theatre company, to facilitate the session which will consider ways to tell stories about climate, nature and pollution.
The workshop is intended for script writers interested in taking part in the Climate Playwriting Prize, a competition designed to uncover new, original and exciting plays about the climate crisis with the view that theatre has a vital role to play in opening up and reimagining climate conservations.
Using theatre to respond to what the company calls ‘the defining challenge of our time,’ participants are invited to consider ‘how climate stories can become compelling drama: from finding the human stakes inside global issues to building characters, conflict, and theatrical worlds.’
tiata fahodzi is celebrating its 30th year of producing work by British African heritage and Black British theatre makers – photo: Rebecca Need-Menear
There will be an opportunity to explore climate topics with Zakiya McKenzie, a Bristol based essayist and cultural historian, previously writer-in-residence for the Forestry Commission, who has been published in various nature writing and radical history collections.
The workshop is unique, organisers say, in its dual focus on climate storytelling and global majority theatre makers, a group that have historically been excluded from the stage.
‘For us at tiata fahodzi, the question of our planet’s future is just as important as any other social issues,” explained Chinonyerem Odimba, the company’s artistic director and CEO.
“We are supporting the work of the Climate Playwriting Prize, and this workshop, because we believe that all voices matter in conversations about climate change and ensuring that global majority voices are inspired to write their stories is a big part of our mission.”
View this post on Instagram
The company stress that “no prior knowledge of climate science is required – just curiosity, imagination, and a desire to tell powerful stories.”
The work is part of the company’s bigger Black Earth project that homes in on conversations about Climate Justice.
The workshop takes place at the Watershed at 1.30pm on Tuesday, May 19. Find more information at shakespearesglobe.com/jobs-and-opportunities/climate-playwriting-prize-2026/#workshops
Main image: Suzannah Gabriel
Read next:
- Meet the man with the best job in Bristol
- The mother-daughter duo uncovering the weird and wonderful world of moths
- ‘People from Black, Brown and migrant communities are too often framed through struggle before professionalism’
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
