Nicola Werenowska
For Frequency Theatre: PLAYWRIGHT
Nicola Werenowska is a playwright, creative workshop facilitator and mentor for students with neuro-diverse learning profiles. After a brief flirtation with playwriting when she was 16 (her first play “Twenty Per Cent” was a runner-up in the 1988 Royal Court Young Playwrights’ Competition), Nicola began her playwriting career in 2003 when she joined the Colchester Mercury Theatre Playwrights. Since then six of her plays have been produced professionally: “Davy’s Day” (Mercury, 2004), “Aftermath” (Mercury, 2006), “Peapickers” (Eastern Angles, 2007), “Freedoms of the Forest” (Menagerie, 2008), “Kwaidan: Strange Tales” (MT, 2008), “Birth Date” (Nabakov, 2012 as part of ‘Best Years’ series.) Her work has been short-listed for national playwriting competitions including Channel 4 The Play’s the Thing (2005) and the Soho Verity Bargate (2007). In 2009 she successfully applied to the Escalator Performing Arts scheme to research and develop a play (“Tu I Teraz”) about experiences of Polish migrants which will tour nationally, (Dec 2012-Feb 2013), commencing with a 5 week run at Hampstead Theatre. In 2010, she participated in Paines Plough’s “Come to Where I’m From” presenting a monologue at the PULSE festival and in 2011 was commissioned by Jumped Up theatre to explore the concept of hometown in Peterborough which culminated in a PULSE reading of her piece, “Standpoint”. In July 2012, with the support of GFTA, Graeae and the Mercury Theatre, she began working on HIDDEN, a play about dyspraxia, which she is currently developing further.
Results
•The teenage daughter of a Polish immigrant struggles with the expectations that go with a "better life".
