We are delighted to announce our London Voices 2021.
The scheme kicked off virtually in February and over the year this group of talented, up and coming London-based writers have joined us for monthly sessions and masterclasses led by industry experts. The aim of the scheme is to give them an overview of the industry; from TV Drama to Children's and Radio.
They have all come from different backgrounds and they have had a chance to explore and learn about the TV landscape, as well as other broadcast mediums. It鈥檚 been a busy schedule across the year and when the scheme comes to an end our relationship continues through tailored support.
Many of our previous London Voices writers have ended up graduating to our other development schemes including Drama Room and TV Drama Writers Programme. Watch this space for more great things to come from this cohort!
If you would like further information about any of the writers, please feel free to contact writersroom@bbc.co.uk or their agent.
The participants in the 2021 group are:
- Tray Agyeman
- Tife Kusoro
- Alegria Adedeji
- Jeremy Ojo
- Zain Dada
- Alex Riddle
- Roann McCloskey
- Samuel Evans
- Sarah Lam Woollard
- Tania Tay
- Nk鈥檌ru Njoku
- Riley Wong
- Nathaniel Rodriguez
- Alvin Yu
- Sabrina Richmond
- Liz Daramola
Find out more about them below.
Tray Agyeman is a writer, screenwriter and storyteller with a particular focus on finding comedy in the most unlikely places. She brings her life experiences to her writing and draws inspiration from her community and everyday life. She is interested in the 鈥榮earch of identity鈥�, diasporic journeys and cultural hybridity. Her writing is heavily influenced by the diverse perspectives and unique lenses of Black women in contemporary Britain and wider Europe. She is currently working on screenplays and a series of monologues.
Tray is represented by Katie Battock at Curtis Brown.
Tife Kusoro is a Nigerian-British writer and performer. Her first full length works for the theatre were shortlisted for awards including the Alfred Fagon Award, the Verity Bargate Award and the Women鈥檚 Prize for Playwriting. She has also undertaken attachments with Talawa Theatre Company, the Bush Theatre and the Royal Court. Tife is currently under commission to the Bush Theatre and to the Royal Court as a 2021 Jerwood Playwright. For TV she is developing projects with Sona Films, Little Door and Dancing Ledge. Her Pilot Butterfly was recently picked up by the Ink Factory and Sky for a table read.
Alegr铆a Adedeji is a director/writer and her work includes the YouTube miniseries There is rice at home. All the episodes were created, written and directed by Alegria with a small team and limited funding. One script from the show went on to win the 91热爆 Writersroom Interconnected competition and another script was shortlisted for the Test Pilot award at the Edinburgh TV festival's New Talent Award. Following on from this success, she is now in development with 91热爆 Studios working on her first series Joy to the World.
Outside of writing and directing, she co-founded the film club BFF which has been lauded by the likes of Ava Duvernay and Amma Asante. This love for film has also seen her form a creative agency, hue., which works with internationally-renown distributors like Amazon and Warner Bros. to create experiential events for underrepresented audiences.
Jeremy Ojo is a writer, actor and director based in London. He co-created and starred in a web series called Shoestring, which came out in 2016 and generated thousands of views on social media with one of the episodes selected as one of the best for BFI鈥檚 Postroom Network. His short film, Upstart Brawler, was shortlisted for the Enter the Pitch film competition. A short piece he co-wrote was selected for the 91热爆鈥檚 Interconnected Competition. He is currently developing a comedy series with Wildcard Films which he has co-written with Barney Fishwick, a drama with Bad Wolf and is writing on 91热爆 Two Sketch show Famalam (91热爆 Studios).
Zain Dada is a writer and cultural producer. He is the co-founder of Khidr Collective Zine 鈥� a zine platforming the work of British Muslims. Zain鈥檚 directing credits include the 2019 Outspoken Prize-winning short visual poem, The Moon is a Meme, and the 2020 Outspoken Prize-nominated animation short, Otherstani. Zain is a Winston Churchill Fellow after publishing his research on 'The Future of Community Arts.' Zain wrote his first play, Blue Mist as part of Soho Theatre Writers Lab 19/20 and Royal Court's Introduction to playwriting 19/20. His first writing credit was for The Royal Court's recent Living Newspaper series for a piece titled, Emily (GLITCHED) in Paris.
Alex Riddle writes off-kilter television drama that embraces genre leanings and healthy dollops of the absurd. A serial 91热爆 Writersroom script window entrant, his scripts have been both shortlisted for drama and longlisted for comedy. His monologue Hips, about a feckless Elvis impersonator, was recently produced by the Papatango Theatre Company for its Isolated but Open anthology and published with Nick Hern Books. Alex has worked in film, publishing, and as a teaching assistant. He was raised in Bognor Regis and lives in South London.
Roann Hassani-McCloskey is a British-Algerian storyteller. Her work includes her 2019 award-winning sell-out, one-woman show, My Father the Tantric Masseur 鈥� an autobiographical exploration of sexuality, ethnicity and family. Her second show, Who Murdered My Cat? shines a light on memory, it鈥檚 inconsistencies and its power, in forming our identities and is finally making its covid-delayed debut in September 2021. She is currently writing a semi-autobiographical comedy-drama TV series Lights, Camera, Couscous in which her Algerian mother, who informs so much of her creative work, has the starring role.
Roann's writing finds the heart and humour that runs through tragedy, and centres around her curiosity and passion for bringing stories usually left at the margins to the centre where they belong.
Samuel Evans is an east-end born queer support worker. Sam started writing short stories as a teenager about the nocturnal strangers he would meet on the top deck of London buses in the middle of the night when he couldn鈥檛 sleep. His first play Tomorrow got him an agent and he started writing plays with the National Youth Theatre, Arcola and Almeida鈥檚 community groups absorbing the voices of others whilst maintaining his own. Whilst working as a drag queen door host in Soho he was awarded a scholarship to NYU in New York for Dramatic Writing where he quickly discovered a passion for TV writing when Spike Lee, his professor told Sam he had a work ethic that鈥檚 bananas and a unique voice whilst calling an agent to recommend Sam to them. When Sam submitted a script I Will Survive, innit about a young man becoming a drag queen to survive a sexual assault and get people to believe him, he landed himself in London Voices. This script also got him nominated for the Brit List by 91热爆 Studios.
Sarah Woollard enjoys a successful career as an actor in theatre, television, film and radio. Her interest in writing was stimulated largely as a result of her participation in developmental workshops where the actor鈥檚 improvisations make a significant contribution to the eventual script. She has since taken part in several writing courses including at the National Film and Television School where she was mentored by Peter Ansorge.
Sarah was born and raised in London but she is of East Asian heritage. Although she has appeared as a regular character in over seven television series she is keenly aware of the virtual invisibility of East Asian characters and their life stories, particularly in TV drama. She feels passionate that that gap needs to be addressed and she wishes to be part of that.
She is currently working on three writing projects: an eight-part television series and two full length plays all of which have central East Asian characters.
Tania Tay writes fiction and screenplays, for children and adults. She was born and bred in East London/Essex. She鈥檚 currently writing a psychological suspense novel and a TV pilot based on her British Malaysian Chinese family. In 2020 she was lucky to be able to develop a script, Shrinkwrap, with the 91热爆 Writers Room. Earlier this year, she was a finalist on the David Higham Agency New Writers scheme. Her unpublished YA novel, Lovespell was longlisted for a writing competition in 2019.
Tania鈥檚 passion for storytelling started as a child. Using an old-fashioned typewriter, she adapted fairytales into scripts for her sister and friends to act in. These days, she鈥檚 interested in exploring stories involving motherhood and friendship, with a dark or supernatural twist. Her previous career as an award-winning copywriter (at J Walter Thompson, Publicis and other ad agencies) has made her a versatile writer, who enjoys working collaboratively and loves coming up with new ideas. Tania has an MA in History of Art from Edinburgh University. She is a mother of three, and organises events for the Society of Children鈥檚 Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI).
Nk'iru. Njoku is a London-based Nigerian writer and filmmaker. She is the head writer of Tinsel 鈥� a 14-year-old Nigerian daily soap. For eight years she was a content director and then content producer with Endemol鈥檚 Project Fame West Africa 鈥� a musical talent hunt and reality series produced by Ultima Limited in Nigeria.
Over several years Nk鈥檌ru. has written - and recently directed - episodes of the MTV messaging drama series, Shuga. Her short film Or矛k铆, written and directed by her, was screened at the Black Star International Film Festival in Ghana where it won the award for Women in Film. It also screened at Cannes Pan African International Film Festival, African International Film Festival Lagos, and Female Eye Film Festival鈥檚 International Women鈥檚 Day Program 2020, amongst others.
Nk鈥檌ru. is studying for a master鈥檚 degree in filmmaking at the Raindance Film School and is putting finishing touches to her second short film as well as creating drama and supernatural-fantasy stories for television. She is interested in spirituality, reincarnation and otherworldliness. As an immigrant who uprooted her life and moved to the UK to afford her British-Nigerian child access to healthcare for blindness and neurodivergence, Nk鈥檌ru.鈥檚 work also explores emotional geography and the complicated social and career experiences of late life emigrees like herself.
Riley Wong is a Northern-born/London-based TV and film writer for drama and comedy-drama. His work often explores universal human woes through absurd or unusual settings and whimsy.
Most recently, his dystopian drama pilot episode The Haven was selected for the BEA Script Editing initiative led by 91热爆 Writersroom. Lifelessnessless, the most recent short film he wrote and directed, was selected for developmental support through B3 Media's Talent Lab Scheme in 2019. Prior to this, he wrote and directed the short film Sleep Tight, Don't let the Existential Crisis Bite! in 2018. It was selected for eight film festivals, awarded 'Best Screenplay' at the Rob Knox Film Festival, and nominated for 'Best International Film' at the Houston Comedy Film Festival.
Nowadays, his main focus is on developing projects and writing for TV, whilst continuing to write and direct short films; as well as writing long ones, and mediums too."
Nathaniel Rodriguez is a writer and director based in Hackney, originally from Brighton. He is currently working as a freelance cameraman and editor having previously worked for Global Radio and Capital Xtra, as well as TwoFour, Studio Lambert and 91热爆 Drama earlier on in his media career.
With a passion for film, Nathaniel has taken the practical skills he鈥檚 acquired and used them to create his own projects, writing, producing, directing and editing his own short films, Dogfish and Premium. Dogfish having reached half a million views on Facebook.
Alvin Yu is a London based writer/director. He studied English at Oxford and upon graduating worked as a chef and a jewellery salesman. Later, he worked for a number of years in scripted development as a researcher and development assistant, developing and writing pitches for a number of TV channels including HBO, Sky and Netflix. He directed a number of short films and music videos, including Split which debuted at the London Short Film Festival. His first TV pilot was selected for development with the 91热爆 Writer's Room BEA Script Editing initiative and was also longlisted for the Sundance Screenwriter's Lab.
Sabrina Richmond is a writer, director and performer who completed her undergraduate degree in journalism and previously had a career in publishing and the non-profit sector. In recent years, she trained as an actor in New York which opened her up to writing for performance. As an emerging writer, themes she has tackled for theatre are identity & belonging through the lens of migration, healing from intergenerational racialised trauma and the right to sexual pleasure.
She鈥檚 an alumni of the Tamasha Theatre Playwrighting program 2019/20. She is currently developing a theatre piece on the right to sexual pleasure called Devil's Doorbell. In 2021, she was shortlisted for UKTV and TriForce Creative Network writers opportunity to have a project produced for television. Her other writing credits include: Genetic Beauty (2020, Virtual Collaborators), My Cape Is Invisible (2019, Pleasance Theatre), Hands Off My Womb! (2019, Chapel Playhouse), 13 Secrets (2021, Old Fire Station online), A Black Story (2020, Applecart Arts), and An African in The Snow (2019, LABS Program, Pleasance Theatre).
Sabrina sees herself as a natural born global shapeshifter being born to a family of people once displaced with artistic passions, having subsequently lived in many countries, climates as well as cultural and political contexts she enjoys exploring this in writing. Movement and music are a core tenet of her artistic practice so she creates and writes from this place.
Liz Daramola is a British Nigerian writer and producer from London. She wrote her debut play Bonhomie as part of Soho Theatre鈥檚 Writers Lab, which was shortlisted for the Tony Craze Award in 2020. For screen, she has been commissioned for Famalam (91热爆 Studios), Pj Masks (Frogbox/Disney Jr.) and is currently developing original comedy-drama TV projects.
As a producer, she won a Stage One Producer bursary in 2018 to develop new work and has most recently worked at Young Vic Theatre and Barbican Centre. Liz is a 2020 alumna of Edinburgh TV Festival鈥檚 The Network and in 2021 was awarded a MGCfutures bursary to support a new role as Literary Associate (Trainee) at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre.
Liz is represented by Imogen Sarre at Casarotto Ramsay & Associates.