Hello!

My name is Eilidh Nurse and this is my very first blog post and the very, very start of my journey with Bunbury Banter. I thought it might be fitting to introduce myself a little bit and to explain why I am SO thrilled to be a part of this programme. 

I applied to the Bunbury Banter Young Playwright’s Programme because it felt silly not to.

Growing up in Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway, I have always loved theatre. The intimacy and electricity of it and the feeling of sharing a one-off experience with a room full of strangers. I have always participated in theatre in some capacity (mainly as a terrible actor), and I had always loved English and writing. But, it had never occurred to me to try and combine the two and write for performance.

I fell in love with playwriting accidentally when I was studying abroad at the University of Kansas. Since then, I have been writing plays (or really, one play) on and off for a few years. I was studying a joint degree in Film and English, and when I graduated in 2018 I did some volunteer work with the Wigtown Book Festival. It was someone from the Wigtown Book Festival who sent me the advert for the Bunbury Banter programme because they remembered I wrote plays. And I’m very grateful that they sent it to me!

The opportunity to work with an organisation and a group of writers over the course of a whole year is something I haven’t experienced since graduating from university. In light of what has been an incredibly rocky twelve months, I’m looking forward to the consistency and structure this will bring. From workshops with professional writers to building a community with the other writers on the programme, I’m so excited for every aspect of the programme. I feel connected to my home region of Galloway and I cannot wait to build connections here. My one full-length play is called Miles and draws upon the unique landscape and rural community of Dumfries and Galloway.

I’m looking forward to meeting new people and learning from them. One thing that excites me the most is that this group is all young women. I feel hugely passionate about making sure women’s voices are heard and women’s stories are told. I think everyone can write a play and, as cliché as it sounds, I genuinely believe every voice is unique and everyone has something to say. Finding your voice, however, can be hard. I’m still in the process of finding mine. And, I know that everything the Bunbury Banter Young Playwright’s Programme offers will be instrumental in helping me with this.

I can’t wait to begin!

 

Eilidh Nurse

Eilidh is part of the Bunbury Banter Young Playwrights Programme 2020-2021