Olwen Wymark has been a great supporter of our London Radio Playwrights'
Festival for many years, and has now become the Festival's new Patron. Her
judging abilities are second to none and her comments on the plays submitted to
the competitions are always precise, clear and extremely constructive and
helpful. She has passed on her own considerable knowledge of writing in a series
of masterclass workshops at the Royal Court Theatre, in which she has given
detailed appraisals of a number of writers' work.
Olwen is an American-born writer who lives and works in London. She has
written for the stage, television, radio and film.
Her theatre productions include Find Me and Best Friends at
the Orange Tree Theatre, Loved at the Bush Theatre, Please Shine
Down on Me at the Royal Court, Speak Now at Leicester Haymarket,
The Technicians at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, One Woman Plays
(an adaptation of plays by Dario Fo) at the Royal National Theatre and Lessons
and Lovers at the Theatre Royal, York. Her comedy, Strike up the Banns,
was staged at Theatr Clwyd, Mold.
Olwen adapted Zola's Nana for Shared Experience which ran at the
Almeida Theatre and subsequently transferred to the Mermaid Theatre, and Brezhnev's
Children - an adaptation of The Women's Decameron by Julia
Voznenskaya, presented at the ICA. Her play, The Queen of Spades (from
Alexander Pushkin) was produced at Perth Theatre in October 1994.
She has written many original radio plays, including the Giles Cooper
Award-winning The Child. Recent dramatisations are Raffles
and (for Radio 5) The Trial of Anna Cotman, Bernice Rubens' novel Spring
Sonata (joint winner of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain
Dramatisation Award 1994). She wrote Out of the Woods for BBC Radio
and has dramatised four W.W. Jacobs stories, recently broadcast on BBC World
Service. Her latest original radio thriller, Thackeray, was broadcast
recently, and she has been commissioned to write three further Thackeray
pieces. She was also commissioned to write a play, Daisy, as part of the
London Radio Playwrights' Festival which was broadcast on
LBC's Drama Specials programme.
Her television work includes original single plays and she has contributed
episodes to a number of series and serials. She has adapted Edith Wharton's The
Reef for BBC TV, and has contributed recently to the Granada series In
Suspicious Circumstances, and British Slaves - a commission for the
BBC.
Her recent film work includes All Men Are Mortal (Gold Award
Winner for Best Feature Film, 1996 Houston, Texas International Festival)
with Stephen Rea and Irene Jacob, produced by Rudolph Weichman.
She has been working on an original screenplay with Jeroem Krabbe, and a
60-minute commissioned teleplay for Granada.
