My First Play

Candid, hilarious, and often sharply revealing, the resulting pieces many of them written in the hurly-burly of work on a new production combine to prove the power of theatre to entrance us, and hold us captive in its spell

Included here are remarkable first-person accounts from many of our leading playwrights ...

Caryl Churchill performing Cinderella to her parents with a cast of dolls and stuffed animals

Howard Brenton pinching his first main character from a boy's comic

Jack Thorne having to become a thief to get his first play on

Conor McPherson still waiting to write his 'first play'

There are also enthralling insights into the first steps in theatre of some of our principal actors and theatre directors ...

Antony Sher discovering theatre in Cape Town during the apartheid years

Dominic Cooke paying the price for using a real knife in performance

Harriet Walter's photographic recall of the annual outing to Peter Pan

Richard Eyre on an open-air performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream that descends into chaos

Published to celebrate twenty-five years of Nick Hern Books, the royalties from the sale of this magical collection of 66 miniature autobiographies will be donated to the Writers' Guild