Culture Now: Dennis Kelly & Alexandra Wood in Conversation with Aleks Sierz

Aleks Sierz discusses playwriting and stage adaptation across genres, including drama and musical, with British playwrights Alexandra Wood and Dennis Kelly.

Alexandra Wood’s play, The Eleventh Capital (2007), was produced by the Royal Court as part of their Young Writers’ Festival, and on the strength of this she won the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright. Wood’s adaptation of Jung Chang’s bestseller, Wild Swans, opened at the A.R.T. (Boston) before coming to the Young Vic (2012). She was one of the writers to contribute to Decade (2011), Headlong's piece exploring the legacy of 9/11.

Dennis Kelly is a London-based playwright. As well as writing the book for Matilda the Musical Kelly’s work for theatre includes Osama the Hero (2005), After the End (2005), Love and Money (2006), Taking Care of Baby (2007) and Orphans (2009). He is currently working on Gorg Kaiser’s From Morning to Midnight. Kelly’s plays have been performed in over thirty countries worldwide and translated into more than twenty languages.

Aleks Sierz is a theatre critic and scholar. He is the author of In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today (Faber, 2001), The Theatre of Martin Crimp (Methuen, 2006), John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (Continuum, 2008) and Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today (Methuen, 2011). Currently co-editor of theatreVOICE website and a contributing editor to The Arts Desk, he works as a journalist, broadcaster, and is theatre critic of Tribune.

In collaboration with The Leverhulme Olympic Talks on Theatre and Adaptation and Queen Mary, University of London.