Barney Norris is a critically acclaimed playwright, poet and author. He chats to Paul following the very successful run of his play -Visitors- at The Watermill Theatre….
 Barney Norris tells stories.
His work has received the International Theatre Institute’s Award for Excellence, the Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright, a South Bank Sky Arts Times Breakthrough Award, an Evening Standard Progress 1000 Award, a Betty Trask Award and the Northern Ireland One Book Award, and been translated into nine languages.
He is a a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, teach creative writing at the University of Oxford, and regularly review fiction for the Guardian.
He is also am a patron of Alabare Christian Care and Support, a charity supporting homeless adults, young people, veterans and those with learning disabilities based in my home city of Salisbury; of Studio Theatre, Salisbury’s amateur theatre; and of the Salisbury Literary Festival.
My advocacy work for writers and writing currently includes serving as Chair of the Society of Authors’ Scriptwriters Panel, and as a member of the Writers Guild of Great Britain Negotiating Team.
Playwright Barney Norris’s first full-length work for the stage, Visitors, captures a married couple’s descent into old age and has recently had a very successful run at The Watermill Theatre.
Barney chats to us about his life, what it was like to write and direct Visitors – plus what the future holds…..
“Writer and director Barney Norris is a local man, whose own life has been affected by the dementia at the heart of his characters’ journeys.
He displays so much deep knowledge and affection in this tale of love rising above the almost insuperable challenges of dealing with a loved one affected by dementia.
Coupled with his obvious feeling for the Berkshire and Wiltshire countryside around, and beyond the Watermill, it makes for an elegiac evening”



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