‘Lane’s List is an invaluable resource for playwrights making their way in the industry. I think all emerging playwrights and theatre-makers should subscribe.’
Eve Leigh: Royal Court, Berlin Theatertreffen Stueckemarkt, RSC
About ten years ago, I gathered together a list of writer contacts from a decade’s work in the industry and began sending out information for playwrights.
At that point, the playwrights were all people I’d met and stayed vaguely in touch with via writing groups I’d led, venues I’d worked with, companies developing new plays, workshops and courses I’d run, university modules I’d taught on and my first literary role at Soho Theatre.
Information was coming to me from other mailing lists, social media feeds, newsletters – and I was really interested in trying to identify, collate and distribute a menu of items that I felt were relevant to career-building as a writer. I’ll come back to that in a minute.
Before long, people were sending me things directly to send back out to this growing community of writers.
‘Lane’s List is the lightning conductor for all that is happening currently in the world of plays, scripts and dramatic writing. It gathers together all the important and not-to-be-missed news about competitions, deadlines, bursaries, theatres-open-to-submissions, workshops, tutorials, masterclasses, conferences and every other opportunity available to the freelance playwright in the UK and abroad. I Find Lane’s List indispensable — and so do the twenty-four playwrights on the courses that I am running currently.’
John Retallack: Writer and Director and Olivier, TMA/SWET and Fringe First Winner
A few years later, due to the time it was taking to compile, this rough-and-ready ad hoc email become formalised online as Lane’s List – a weekly email bulletin collecting and distributing new opportunities every week for UK-based playwrights.
When that happened, it also went public online. Within a few months, I was sending out information to hundreds of writers each week. In 2015 this became a subscriber list.
I’ve sent out around 7,000 different opportunities to playwrights, averaging around 15-20 new items every week (bar a few gaps for holidays and getting Covid).
‘a brilliant one stop shop for so many industry-wide opportunities as well as a selection of interesting interviews and articles. It’s just a lovely, juicy thing to find in your inbox each week.’
Jane Upton: George Devine Winner, National Theatre Attachment
To be clear: by ‘opportunities’, I’ve never just meant the conventional script submission route. That’s because my own career as a writer began across multiple pathways.
As a script reader. As a workshop leader. As a marketing assistant. Working in a ticket office. As a visiting youth theatre practitioner, and as a facilitator, writing intensive half-term projects, or collaborative devised work with primary school extra-curricular clubs. Reading reviews and reading articles about theatre.
None of these activities were productions or commissions, and many of them were not explicitly writing jobs.
But over time, these roles gave me experience of what it meant to be a writer, experience of the wider industry, and perhaps most importantly, encouraged my brain to think like an entrepreneurial businessperson.
Over time, this work laid a clear path to that commissioned writing work I was searching for.
‘An oasis of positivity and opportunity. Lane’s List turns all that information out there into something more important – knowledge in one place. David is a secret influencer: his weekly email connects writers to the world of writing. He’s helped me win things. He’s helped my career immensely.’
Christopher Hogg: Playwright and Lecturer in Creative and Social Media, RHUL
Opportunities to understand how your skills as a writer – which are also dramaturgical skills – can keep you thinking and working like a writer, being in and around the development of scripts and plays as much as possible, are invaluable.
Tactically it’s also far stronger than sitting around waiting for a theatre to write back, months after you’ve sent your play in.
It led me to a much stronger understanding and pro-active attitude towards the industry in which I was working, and how I might try and sustain a career within it.
That also encouraged me to keep blogging about my own process as a writer – creatively and in terms of continued employment – hoping that some of my reflections might help out writers in similar situations, or asking similar questions of their craft and career.
‘It’s rare to get such a candid insight into another writer’s process, fears and struggles. Several times when I’ve been reading it you’ve exactly pinpointed something I’ve been going through too but hadn’t even realised or been able to articulate.’
Bea Roberts: Theatre 503 Playwriting Award Winner, RSC, National Theatre Attachment
Lane’s List is still operating today on the same basis: making the industry visible to subscribers by gathering, organising and indexing the pathways and avenues that are out there.
There have been major shifts in the last seven years too.
The pandemic has led to a wonderful explosion of global creative opportunities online. There’s more encouragement and specific targeting of voices underrepresented on our stages, more awareness of the youth-focused leaning of many writing programmes and how that might be recalibrated, more work and training in audio, digital and VR.
There’s more innovative open-access training like live Twitter workshops, YouTube courses, practitioner interviews, more calls for writers to consider opportunities for ‘artists’ – recognising the necessary adaptability of writers’ skills to go beyond simply penning a script.
‘Lane’s list is quite simply invaluable: the most comprehensive summary of opportunities, call outs and jobs, written and compiled by someone who really understands the industry, with a host of links and articles to inspire and inform. It’s become the go to to stay connected.’
Marion Nancarrow: BBC RADIO Drama, Writer and Director and FORMER EXEC. PRODUCER
The philosophy I started with has been reinforced by this variety of items each week.
Building a career as a writer is about a plurality of roles and flexibility of skills – about considering where can you apply your writing mind to multiple opportunities.
The List isn’t perfect. It’s filtered and selected only by me. Sometimes opportunities are seen late, and the deadlines are rushing up only days after the List has gone out.
What’s surprised me most however is the connection it does seem to make with writers. There’s a loyalty and a feeling that they are part of a community, despite never having met.
Lane’s List continued throughout the pandemic, switching to indexing online theatre as well as opportunities, getting theatre into people’s inboxes.
Until that time I had no idea how much people had been relying on it for motivation, inspiration, and a sense of optimism that things were still possible.
‘Lane’s List is an invaluable resource for keeping me and my students in touch with playwriting news and opportunities. As they transition from their undergraduate programmes, they’re keen to develop their skills further and enter the professional theatre: Lane’s List is really helpful, very affordable, and opens up that world to them.’
Prof. Cathy Turner: University of Exeter Drama Department
That sense of possibility – of the writing world opening up – captures what drives the List.
So often as writers we hear that it is a lonely, isolating, and frustrating process. The idea behind Lane’s List is that it motivates, inspires and connects writers by opening up possibilities, offering a hopeful and optimistic future.
If you’d like to join us, it’s only the price of a coffee a month. Do come and give it a go.
And here’s to the next 7,000 items!
‘Lane’s List is a truly wonderful resource for playwrights, advertising both regional and international employment and development opportunities. It also does a wonderful job of collating articles and other online resources that saves me the pain of trolling through the bog of Theatre Twitter.’
Sarah Sigal: Dramaturg & Associate Research Fellow, Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre
You can subscribe to Lane’s List HERE
AND find out more about how it workS HERE