Dr James Kenworth
James Kenworth is a Playwright/Scriptwriter and Academic/SeniorLecturer in Media Narrative at Middlesex University, London. His plays includes ‘verse-prose’ plays Johnny Song, Gob; the black comedy Polar Bears; issue-led/based plays Everybody’s World (ElderAbuse), Dementia’s Journey (Dementia); plays for young people/schools, The Last Story in the World; and a Newham-based quintet of site-specific/responsive plays: When Chaplin Met Gandhi, Revolution Farm, A Splotch of Red: Keir Hardie in West Ham and Alice in Canning Town; Elizabeth Fry: The Angel of Prisons. His research interests include biographical and historical drama, adaptations of literary classics, site-specific and non-traditional/outsider improvised performance space.
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 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, it 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 and Playwright, 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, which the Independent’s Paul Taylor described 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 raising awareness play, Dementia’s Journey, won the 2015 University of Stirling International Dementia Award in the category: Dementia & the Arts.
His critically acclaimed series of localist-focussed shows, 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-imagining’s/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 were 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; and academics and researchers from Middlesex University.
In addition to receiving main funding for the productions, all five 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. We 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 play 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, he was awarded Doctor of Philosophy by Public Works for his thesis, Public Spaces, Public Words: PUBLIC SPACES, PUBLIC WORDS: Contextualising Pro-Localist, Site-Local, New Writing and its roots in a community’s history, culture and people, which 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 literacy 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 and Alice in Canning Town is published by independent UK publishing house playdeadpress.
The Newham Plays have been filmed, edited, and produced by Middlesex University’s Media Department’s BA Film students, and can be viewed in the website’s VIDEOS section.
His most recent play, Elizabeth Fry: The Angel of Prisons, the fifth in the Newham Play series, performed at Canning Town Library in 2022, garnered impressive critical acclaim, with the Evening Standard writing, a “Hyper-local history play about penal reformer Elizabeth Fry has heart.", and The Spectator, “The script blends present-day London vernacular with the dialect of the early 19th century. It’s easy to watch and it delivers heaps of information without any hint of lecture-hall formality."
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 review 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, Morning Star.