Al Smith (playwright)

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Al Smith is a British playwright.

[edit] History

In February 2005, Al wrote and directed Chalk, which he produced under his own production company name Kandinsky, at the Bedlam Theatre. The following Fringe, he wrote, directed and appeared in Enola which won the Three Weeks Editors Award and was selected for NSDF.^[1]

His third play, The Astronaut Wives' Club was performed in August and September 2006 at the Soho Theatre for the National Youth Theatre's Soho Sextet, and his fourth play Radio premiered at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe, before transferring to the Soho Theatre, London. It was then taken to 59E59, New York City and later commissioned as an Afternoon Play for BBC Radio 4.

He wrote the short play Mayfly for the New Voices 24 Hour Plays at the Old Vic.

In April 2006, his new play Enola, which tackles the deeply trying controversies surrounding the creation and deployment of the atom bomb during World War II, won him the Sunday Times Playwriting Award.^[2]

He is a Playwright-in-Residence at the Finborough Theatre, London through which he won a Pearson Bursary for Radio in December 2006 and in April 2007, he won a second Sunday Times Playwriting Award for Radio.

He is a young writer at the Royal Court Theatre, is currently attached to Paines Plough, and is on the Writers Academy at the BBC.