Alan Harris

Alan Harris is a Welsh playwright.^[1]

Career

His play A Good Night Out in the Valleys ^[2] launched the new National Theatre Wales ^[3] and he has worked with theatre companies throughout the United Kingdom.

He won a Judges’ Award at the 2015 Bruntwood Prize^[4] for his play How My Light is Spent at the Royal Exchange, Manchester. He also wrote The Opportunity of Efficiency - the first international collaboration for National Theatre Wales with the New National Theatre Tokyo. The play was staged at the New National Theatre Tokyo's The Pit stage in 2013 and was directed by NTW artistic director John McGrath.

In 2011 he set up liveartshow, a company specialising in new theatre with music with director Martin Constantine and composer Harry Blake. The company staged Manga Sister,^[5] a contemporary dance opera, at The Yard, London and the same venue staged a re-telling of Rhinegold by the same company in 2012. Liveartshow also presented The Future For Beginners, a co-production with the Wales Millennium Centre, at Summerhall at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014 along with a national tour. The production won a Musical Theatre Network Award while at Edinburgh.^[6]

The Journey, an opera for the Welsh National Opera, was commissioned by the company’s MAX department and in 2014 he adapted Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop for the stage at Cardiff's Chapter theatre. Other international work includes Marsha at the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington DC ^[7] and A Scythe of Time, a collaboration with United States composer Mark Swanson.

Radio plays include The Gold Farmer for BBC Radio 3's The Wire season and The Lighthouse, Wolf, A Certain Date and Take Me To Victoria Park, all for BBC Radio 4. Harris was commissioned by Paines Plough as part of their Come To Where I’m From tour (summer 2010).

His debut stage play, Orange,^[8] was commissioned and produced by Sgript Cymru and he has worked with companies including Pentabus, Hijinx Theatre, Sherman Cymru, Paines Plough, The Operating Theatre Company, Mess Up The Mess and Crashmat Collective.

A former journalist who was educated at Bryn Celynnog Comprehensive School, Harris has worked with the Welsh National Opera since 2008 on a range of projects and has also worked with the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain as a writing workshop leader and with prisoners at HMP Cardiff on a radio play entitled I Forgot To Tell You, a platinum Koestler Trust award winner.

He is the winner of a prestigious Creative Wales Award 2010/11 from the Arts Council of Wales ^[9] and represented by Nick Quinn at The Agency, London.

References