Dramaturgy, Script-Reading, Consultancy

As of July 2024, I am Literary Associate of the Orange Tree Theatre. For more information about opportunities at the Orange Tree as an artist, please visit the Orange Tree’s website here.

I have worked as a script-reader, offering dramaturgical and development feedback on new work, since 2003. In 2024 I was Interim Literary Associate at the Royal Court, and in 2023 was a reader for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 37 Plays project.

Although much of this work has been specifically related to Spanish-language projects (Royal Court, Out of the Wings, Eurodram), I have also worked in reading and consultancy contexts for English-language playwriting and plays translated from other languages (Theatre503 Playwriting Award, Global Voices, ScriptXtra).

Working with international plays, and being a translator, affords me an approach to dramaturgy which is instinctively writer-centred, based on trusting that a writer knows what they want to write, being more open to forms that are less familiar to UK/US conventions, and resisting the idea that there is only one type of play that audiences can be receptive to. And like many translators, my work involves seeking, scouting for and championing new work, and forming collaborative relationships with emerging and established artists.

For the Royal Court Theatre, I have been a reader and consultant on international projects since 2003. I have read, reported on, and given dramaturgical guidance on large volumes of plays by emerging writers from multiple countries, from their first drafts, through rewrites, and through to production. This work has included supporting the selection process of applicants to playwriting workshops, reading and reporting multiple times on the same play, participating in programming discussions, facilitating dramaturgical feedback, and sitting in on rehearsals to support writers in their communication with other creatives. In 2022 I was Coordinating Translator on the Royal Court’s latest Spanish-language new-writing project, supporting the work of the translation team as a whole as well as translating myself. In 2024 I was Interim Literary Associate at the Court during the first months of artistic director David Byrne’s tenure.

In 2023 I was part of the reading team for the Royal Shakespeare Company‘s 37 Plays project, a national competition that invited anyone in the UK of any age and experience level to submit a play. From hundreds of entries, a ‘new folio‘ of plays emerged.

As a member of the management team of Out of the Wings (OOTW) since 2016, I have been part of the annual selection panel for the OOTW festival of plays, most recently held at the Omnibus Theatre, London. In addition to this I am a regular at OOTW’s monthly script-reading group and led the organisation and selection team for OOTW’s first-ever emerging translators’ scratch night in 2021.

In 2020 and in 2022 I was a reader for the prestigious Theatre503 international playwriting award. Having worked with T503 to improve their outreach to plays in translation, I was then invited to read for the award as a whole, through two rounds of large-volume reading and assessment, giving written reports and participating in whole-panel discussions about candidate plays. I have also been a curator for T503’s Rapid Write Response.

Having initiated the Global Queer Plays event at the Arcola Theatre in 2018, which involved reading and selecting the plays to be showcased following an open call, I worked as the lead curator for Global Queer Voices a year later, produced by the then newly-formed company Global Voices Theatre. The plays showcased at Global Queer Plays were subsequently published in an anthology by Oberon Books.

From 2016 to 2022 I was a member of the Spanish committee of Eurodram, a pan-European new-writing network that selects and promotes contemporary plays in their original language and in translation across the continent and beyond.

In 2020 I joined ScriptXtra, a new-writing group led by the playwright Steve Waters, meeting several times a month to read, offer feedback on, and support new writing for the stage.

Throughout my career I have also given ad-hoc consultancy as a reader for individual writers and for companies and producers including the Young Vic, Legal Aliens, and others.

This page focusses on my work in dramaturgy and script reading. Elsewhere you can read about my work translating, writing and editing, speaking or chairing discussions, conceiving of and producing projects, and teaching and mentoring.