Roy Williams

Plays: 3

Fallout, Slow Time, Days of Significance,
Absolute Beginners

Fallout : You stagger out of Roy Williamss new play feeling both exhilarated and shattered. Exhilarated because this drama marks the moment when a promising dramatist spectacularly achieves his full potential; shattered because the play, though shot through with humour, is as bleak and persuasive an account of black youth culture in Britain today as you are ever likely to encounter Daily Telegraph

Slow Time : The play is set in the bleak confines of a young offenders institution in the hour before dawn [where] three boys one white, one black and one Asian struggle to comprehend the brutality of their surroundings, and reveal the bullying, crime and peer group pressure that have brought them there Evening Standard

Days of Significance : A play of passion and political anger He uses the plot of Much Ado About Nothing as a springboard to examine the nave, adolescent and often racist values that many of our young British soldiers have exported to Iraq It makes for a tough, pugnacious evening that shows Williams, who has impressively charted the intricacies of Anglo-Saxon racism, widening his horizons to tackle the poisoned state of society Guardian

Absolute Beginners , a stage adaptation of Colin MacInness seminal novel of adolescence set in London in 1958: Bags of energy and highly watchable Daily Mail Williams in adapting [has] seized on the stylised quality of the prose and created something that, right from the off, looks, sounds and moves in a completely distinctive way Observer

Roy Williams worked as an actor before turning to writing full-time in 1990. He graduated from Rose Bruford in 1995 with a first class BA Hons degree in Writing and participated in the 1997 Carlton Television screenwriters course. The No Boys Cricket Club (Theatre Royal, Stratford East, 1996) won him nominations for the TAPS Writer of the Year Award 1996 and for New Writer of the Year Award 1996 by the Writers Guild of Great Britain. He was the first recipient of the Alfred Fagon Award 1997 for Starstruck (Tricycle Theatre, London, 1998), which also won the 31st John Whiting Award and the EMMA Award 1999. Lift Off (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 1999) was the joint winner of the George Devine Award 2000. His other plays include: Night and Day (Theatre Venture, 1996); Josies Boys (Red Ladder Theatre Co., 1996); Souls (Theatre Centre, 1999); Local Boy (Hampstead Theatre, 2000); The Gift (Birmingham Rep/Tricycle Theatre, 2000); Clubland (Royal Court, 2001), winner of the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for the Most Promising Playwright; Fallout (Royal Court Theatre, 2003) which was made for television by Company Pictures/Channel 4; Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads (National Theatre, 2002, 2004), Little Sweet Thing (New Wolsey, Ipswich/Nottingham Playhouse/Birmingham Rep, 2005), Slow Time (National Theatre Education Department tour, 2005), Days of Significance (Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2007), Absolute Beginners (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, 2007), Joe Guy (Tiata Fahodzi/Soho Theatre, 2007), Baby Girl (National Theatre, 2007), Out of the Fog (Almeida Theatre, 2007), Theres Only One Wayne Matthews (Polka Theatre, 2007), and he contributed to A Chain Play (Almeida Theatre, 2007). His screenplays include Offside , winner of a BAFTA for Best Schools Drama 2002. His radio plays include Tell Tale ; Homeboys , Westway , which was broadcast as part of Radio 4 First Bite Young Writers Festival, and To Sir with Love . He also wrote Babyfather for BBC TV.

by the same author

Clubland

Days of Significance

Fallout

The Gift

Joe Guy

Little Sweet Thing

Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads

Starstruck/The No Boys Cricket Club

Williams Plays: 1

(The No Boys Cricket Club, Starstruck, Lift Off)

Williams Plays: 2

(The Gift, Clubland, Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads)