Chris Urch is an English

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

. He trained at the

Drama Centre Drama Centre London (often abbreviated as Drama Centre) was a British drama school in King's Cross, London, where it moved in 2011 after a major reshaping of the University of the Arts London. It was part of Central Saint Martins, a constitu ...

as an actor, before turning to writing plays. His first full-length play ''Land of Our Fathers'', set in a Welsh coalmine on the eve of the 1979 general election, received wide critical acclaim when it opened at Theatre503 in London in 2013.Timeout Top 10 Theatre of 2013
/ref> The play then transferred to the

Trafalgar Theatre Trafalgar Theatre is a new West End theatre in Whitehall, near Trafalgar Square, in the City of Westminster, London. It is set to open in spring 2021 following a major multi-million pound restoration project aiming to reinstate it back to its ...

in the West End, before launching on a national tour. Urch's next major play, ''The Rolling Stone'', deals with the topic of violent homophobia in Uganda. It received its premiere at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester in 2015 and then transferred to the Orange Tree Theatre in London. The play won the

Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting is a British competition for playwriting, the largest of its kind in Europe—in 2019 it received 2561 entries. Since its inception in 2005, more than 15,000 scripts have been entered, £304,000 has been awarded ...

in 2013, the Manchester Theatre Award for Best New Play in 2015, and Best New Play at the Off West End Awards 2017. The play opened at the

off-broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...

Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater The Vivian Beaumont Theater is a Broadway theater in the Lincoln Center complex at 150 West 65th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Operated by the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), the Beaumont is the only Broad ...

in New York City in 2019. Urch has also written a number of short plays, including ''You Get Me?'' (Bush Theatre), ''Talent'' (Soho Theatre), ''Skanky'' (Arcola), ''Married to the Game'' (Theatre 503), ''A Girl Like You'' (Latitude Festival) and ''G.L.O.R.Y'' (Canal Café Theatre) Urch was born and grew up in

Midsomer Norton Midsomer Norton is a town near the Mendip Hills in Bath and North East Somerset, England, south-west of Bath, north-east of Wells, north-west of Frome, west of Trowbridge and south-east of Bristol. It has a population of around 13,000. ...

in Somerset and became engaged to long term partner actor Jordan Mifsud in 2018. They currently reside in Bath.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Urch, Chris English dramatists and playwrights Living people Year of birth missing (living people) People from Midsomer Norton