Margaret Edwards

I've now spent most of my life in Chichester, via an idyllic childhood in Laurie Lee countryside, and a hippie paradise at York University. I've picked tomatoes, sold shoes and pies, and worked for the local paper, but most of my time outside family life has been in teaching - exhausting and thoroughly rewarding. I've been lucky. It's been Writing - Teaching - Writing. I've come full circle. I started writing at 6, filling exercise books with poems and stories, and now after teaching I have begun again, this time with drama.
Along the way I've had some minor success with the poems, and now I am addicted to seeing my small attempts at drama acted out for an audience. I most admire theatre that elicits emotion, whether witty, shocking or profound, especially if woven together. I like walking out of a theatre laughing or crying and then falling asleep thinking about the layers underneath.
Yasmin Reza is a favourite playwright, also Brian Friel, Hare, Stoppard. I'm optimistic about the future of theatre. As it becomes increasingly hard to make theatre commercially viable there may be more pop-up theatre, roosting in empty banks and cafes… Writing will be ever more varied, and individual voices will be valued over tired trends and stereotypes!