Nicola’s first play Twenty Per Cent, written when she was 16, was a runner-up in the 1988 Royal Court Young Playwrights’ Competition. After a long gap, in which she studied modern languages to Ph.D. level, she returned to playwriting when she joined the Colchester Mercury Theatre Playwrights’ Group in 2003. Since then she has had five plays produced professionally/semi-professionally: Davy’s Day (Mercury Theatre, 2004), Aftermath (Mercury, 2006), Peapickers (Eastern Angles, 2007), Freedoms of the Forest (Menagerie, 2008), Kwaidan: Strange Tales (Mercury, 2008).
Her work has been short-listed for several national playwriting competitions including the Drama Association of Wales Playwriting Competition (2005), the London Writers Competition (2005), Channel 4 The Play’s the Thing (2005), the Churchill Theatre Playwriting Competition (2006), the Soho Verity Bargate Award (2007).
She is currently working on an Escalator project, supported by the Mercury Theatre, exploring the experiences of Polish migrants in the region.
