Theatre's bright young things

As Michael Billington warns of the danger of theatre succumbing to directors as auteurs, in The Sunday Times, Ed Caesar talks to 22-year-old playwright Polly Stenham and profiles other leading young British playwrights.

“The first play [That Face] was, in many ways, so easy,” she says. “It felt like a massive blag. I wrote it in four months, I only did three or four drafts, and it all happened so quickly.

“With this one [Tusk Tusk], it was so hard to write. It took 18 months, and 17 drafts. It was real blood, sweat and tears. I knew that I wanted to write about siblings, and I knew my characters, but

I didn’t stand back like an older writer would have done, and think, ‘What is the best way of dealing with these people and their situation?’ I just kept running and running at it like a demented pony.”