James Kenworth
James Kenworth is a Playwright, Creative Writing Tutor, Arts Educator and Academic. His plays include ‘verse-prose’ plays Johnny Song, Gob; the black comedy Polar Bears; issue-led/based plays Everybody’s World (Elder Abuse), Dementia’s Journey (Dementia); plays for young people/schools, The Last Story in the World; and a Newham-based 7-play cycle of site-specific/responsive plays: When Chaplin Met Gandhi, Revolution Farm (inspired by George Orwell’s Animal Farm), A Splotch of Red: Keir Hardie in West Ham, Alice in Canning Town, Elizabeth Fry: ‘The Angel of Prisons’; Myrninerest: The Outside/Inside Life of Madge Gill, and Three Ghosts of Silvertown.
James was Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Middlesex University, London, where he also served as Programme Leader for the MA in Novel Writing. During his time as Creative Writing Lecturer, he successfully achieved Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, promotion to Senior Lecturer, and was awarded his Doctor of Philosophy by Public Works for his thesis, Public Spaces, Public Words: Contextualising Pro-Localist, Site-Local, New Writing and its roots in a community’s history, culture and people. The Newham Plays were reviewed by Middlesex University’s Research Degrees and chosen by Faculty REF coordinators to be submitted for the Research Excellence Framework 2021, evidencing and supporting their claim that the impact of the Newham Plays is in enhancing cultural provision, developing young people’s talent/skills, and benefiting local organisations through pro-localist, site-local, new writing.
James made his playwriting debut in 1998 with the one-act short verse-play Johnny Song at Warehouse Theatre, Croydon. Following a successful showcase of Johnny Song at Warehouse Theatre’s International Playwriting Festival in 1997, Warehouse Theatre commissioned the play and Johnny Song received a full production at the theatre the following year.
His debut full-length play, Gob, in 1999, starred former Take That star Jason Orange, and was Time Out and What’s On Critics’ Choice at King’s Head Theatre, Islington. In a radical and subversive departure from his boyband image, Jason Orange played a ‘homeless techno revolutionary in crustie combats and a grubby Che Guevara T-shirt’. Its revival at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2003 earned the distinction of two five-star reviews from Three Weeks and The List, and was included in the feature “Editor’s Highlights of the Fringe”. Following its Edinburgh success, Gob transferred to The Courtyard Theatre in King’s Cross, earning yet more rave reviews.
James was one of eight playwrights selected to take part in the inaugural Tamasha/Mulberry School Writers Attachment Scheme in 2011, created and taught by playwright and Tamasha Theatre Company co-Artistic Director Fin Kennedy. The scheme has since become Schoolwrights, the UK’s first playwrights-in-schools training scheme, which uses Mulberry School as a training base for other writers. As part of the Attachment Scheme, his play The Last Story in the World was performed by Mulberry students, supported by professional actors, as a script-in-hand rehearsed reading, on a ‘scratch performance’ at Soho Theatre.
In 2014, James received special permission from the George Orwell Estate to write a contemporary re-imagining of Animal Farm, retitled Revolution Farm, performed on an inner-city farm in East London. The Independent’s Paul Taylor described the reworking as a ‘terrifically powerful update…highly recommended’, and British Theatre Guide wrote: ‘If Animal Farm is on the curriculum this term, what better way to introduce it?’
His play Dementia’s Journey, commissioned by EKTA Project, Newham, to raise dementia awareness and challenge stigma in South Asian communities, won the 2015 University of Stirling International Dementia Award in the category Dementia & the Arts.
His critically acclaimed series of locally made theatre, the Newham Plays, rooted in Newham’s history, culture and people, have been performed in non-traditional but site-sympathetic locations in Newham, featuring a ‘mixed economy’ casting of young people and professional actors. The plays range from radical re-imaginings/remixes of classic literature to dramatizing Newham’s rich political heritage. James has originated and devised a Pro-Localist approach to cultural engagement in the borough, in which the plays are partnered and supported by a nexus of funders, partners and stakeholders. These include well-known, local, grassroots organizations and charities, which have substantial roots and ties in the community; local primary and secondary schools; libraries and community centres; and academics, researchers and students/graduates from Middlesex University.
In addition to being awarded Main Grants Programme funding for the productions, all seven Newham Plays have been awarded funding/grants to produce an Education Resource Pack, which explores in a stimulating and creative way the issues and themes arising from the plays. The Newham Plays have used this Resource Pack as the basis to run a series of free drama workshops in Newham schools, colleges and youth theatres based on concepts in the plays that are relevant to today’s young generation, e.g. education and social class, power and language, political engagement/apathy, dreams/ideals and hopes/ambitions for the future.
In 2021, James was awarded Doctor of Philosophy by Public Works for his thesis, Public Spaces, Public Words: Contextualising Pro-Localist, Site-Local, New Writing and its roots in a community’s history, culture and people. The doctorate explored his creative practice as a playwright and investigated the efficacy of the use of Pro-Localism in a specific urban environment, and addressed the question: how can iconic literary classics and historical drama/biography be rewritten and ‘localized’ to reflect a sense of a place, people and culture?
When Chaplin Met Gandhi is published by small publishing house TSL Publications. A Splotch of Red is published by New Internationalist’s Workable, a new publishing imprint dedicated to trade unions and organized workers. Revolution Farm, Alice in Canning Town and Elizabeth Fry: ‘The Angel of Prisons’ are published by independent UK publishing house playdeadpress.
The Newham Plays have been filmed, edited, and produced by Middlesex University’s BA Film students/graduates, and can be viewed in the website’s FILMED PERFORMANCES section.
James’s pioneering of a Pro-Localist methodology of theatre making in non-traditional spaces, featuring a hybrid of professional artists with local talent, was highlighted and championed in a recent review of Elizabeth Fry: ‘The Angel of Prisons’ by London Theatre Reviews: “Kenworth’s production is an inspiration for theatre makers across London. The ‘Pro-localist’ ethos, combined with facilitating a local community space, could be the answer to countless fringe and off-west end theatres having to close their doors across London.”
His plays have been reviewed in The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, The Spectator, Evening Standard, British Theatre Guide, Eastern Eye and Morning Star.