# Bryony Lavery

Bryony Lavery (born 1947) is a British dramatist, known for her successful and award-winning 1998 play Frozen. In addition to her work in theatre, she has also written for television and radio. She has written books including the biography Tallulah Bankhead and The Woman Writer's Handbook. She taught playwriting at the University of Birmingham.

## Biography

Lavery grew up in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
Having begun her career as an actress, she decided that she wanted to write plays with better parts for women. Early in her career she founded a theatre company called Les Oeufs Malades (The Bad Eggs) with actors Gerard Bell and Jessica Higgs. She also founded Female Trouble, More Female Trouble, and served as artistic director of Gay Sweatshop.
Her plays have a feminist undertone. She has written such plays as More Light, which has only one male speaking role, with almost entirely female casts. By 2002, she had written more than twenty plays.
In addition, she has written translations of such works as Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.
She has written five plays for the National Theatre Connections series. Her successful Frozen triggered a controversy and discussion about artistic sources and plagiarism. It was the subject of a piece by Malcolm Gladwell published in The New Yorker and collected in his book What the Dog Saw.
She adapted Treasure Island, the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, as a play which was first performed on the Olivier Stage of the National Theatre, London, on 3 December 2014.
She was married to a man until her early thirties. Since that period, Lavery has identified as gay.

## Selected works

* The Two Marias (1988) – Theatre Centre
* Her Aching Heart (1992)
** The Pink Paper's Play of the Year
* Peter Pan (1991) – a pantomime
* Goliath (1997)
* More Light (1997) – National Theatre Connections
* Frozen (1998)
** Nomination/Tony Award for Best Play
** Eileen Anderson Central Television Award
** TMA Best New Play Award
* The Magic Toyshop (2001)
* A Wedding Story (2000)
* Illyria (2002) – NT Connections
* Last Easter (2004)
* Stockholm (2007) – Frantic Assembly
* Red Sky (2007, play) – NT Connections
* It Snows (2008, play) – NT Connections
* Breathing Underwater (1998 radio play) – BBC Radio 7
* Kursk (2009, play) – Young Vic
* Beautiful Burnout (2010) – Frantic Assembly / National Theatre of Scotland
* Dirt (2012, play) – Studio Theatre
* The Believers (2014, play) – Tricycle Theatre

### Stage adaptations

* A Christmas Carol (by Charles Dickens, music and lyrics by Jason Carr) – Chichester Festival Theatre (2008, 2015) / Birmingham Repertory Theatre (2009, 2013) / West Yorkshire Playhouse (2010)
* Treasure Island (by Robert Louis Stevenson) – National Theatre (2014) / Birmingham Repertory Theatre (2016)
* Brighton Rock (by Graham Greene) – Pilot Theatre / York Theatre Royal / UK tour (2018)
* The Lovely Bones (by Alice Sebold) – Royal & Derngate, Northampton / Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse / Northern Stage / Birmingham Repertory Theatre / New Wolsey Theatre (2018)
* The Midnight Gang (by David Walliams, music and lyrics by Joe Stilgoe) – Chichester Festival Theatre (2018)
* Swallows and Amazons (by Arthur Ransome) – Storyhouse / Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre (2018)
* The Book of Dust - La Belle Sauvage (by Philip Pullman) – Bridge Theatre (2020).