Mike Kenny
Mike is one of the UK's leading writers, specialising in theatre for young people and families. He was included in the Independent on Sunday’s list of Top Ten Living UK Playwrights, was the first recipient of The Arts Council of England Children’s Award, and several Writers Guild of GB Awards. The Kinderteaterpreis in Germany, and 3 LA Critics Awards in the US, and was nominated for a prix Moliere in France. His plays are performed regularly throughout the UK and all over the world.
He trained as a teacher of English and drama and joined the Leeds Playhouse Theatre in Education as an actor/teacher, turning to writing in the mid 80s. His main focus has always been writing for children and their friends and families, but a constant present strand has been work with and for d/deaf companies and audiences. He has also written many large scale community plays and libretti, most recently Calderland, which won a Royal Philharmonic Society Award.
Recent productions include original plays Bin Men (AJTC); The Ice Child, The Messenger (Barnstorm, Ireland) and new adaptations of Solace of the Road (Derby Theatre); The Wind in the Willows and King Arthur (York Theatre Royal); Aladdin and Jack and the Beanstalk (West Yorkshire Playhouse.)
Credits include: Un Reve sauvage (Wild Dreams) (Theatre du Rond-Point, Paris); Twin Stars (Unicorn Theatre,London); La Nuit Electrique (Electric Darkness) for Comédie de Valence (France); Who Cares? (Region Theatre, Vaxjo, Sweden); Whiter Than Snow (Graeae, London); Flat Stanley (West Yorkshire Playhouse and Polka, London); The Snow Queen – new version for Cork City of Culture (Graffiti, Ireland); Swan Songs (Sherman Theatre, Wales); Boy With a Suitcase (SNAP); The Gardener (AJTC and Nottingham Playhouse); Of Mice and Men (Mind…..the Gap); Rumpelsiltskin (hiccup theatre); The Boy who cried Wolf and the Princess and the Pea (Tutti Frutti), Jimmy et se souers (Cie de Louise)
His adaptation of The Railway Children won the 2011 Olivier Award for Best Entertainment. In 2012 he created a new version of The York Mysteries, and has since created the large scale, site sensitive community plays, Blood and Chocolate and In Fog and Falling Snow, and This is Not For You, for Graeae and 14-18-NOW. His new version of Rapunzel for Tutti Frutti represented Britain at the World Congress of Children's Theatre in Warsaw, Poland in May 2014.
Contact: (US) mwright@childrenstheatre.org, (UK) victoria@alanbrodie.com