Nick Harrison
Since attaining my MA in Play and Screenwriting – graduating from City, University of London, in 2014 – I have had three plays successfully produced in London, commissioned and directed by Martin Parr, known for producing work in unconventional spaces.
Consequently, with a produced two-hander, one-act ensemble piece, and monologue to my name, I am now looking to expand my writing to include film and television scripts.
I have, for a while now, been looking to expand my writing to include screen projects after receiving encouraging responses from various initiatives, such as BBC Writersroom. In September, 2019, I was one of ten under-represented screenwriters selected to attend a specially curated open day at literary agency, David Higham Associates.
Brought up in north-east England on a TV diet of predominantly kitchen-sink drama (Brookside, for instance – with its relatable residents, naturalistic dialogue, and hard-edged storylines – could easily have been the new estate behind my comprehensive school’s playing fields) social realism is generally my preferred dramatic genre: often, the grittier the better.
Similarly, the dramatisation of actual events always, for me, makes for a powerful watch and subsequent read if the script is available, from ‘Chernobyl’ to ‘Three Girls’ and ‘Gentleman Jack’. Accordingly, my motivation to write often comes from hearing true stories and researching real-life people – living or not, recent or historical – and thinking about the issues surrounding those stories and people.
Writers Jimmy McGovern, Sally Wainwright, Jed Mercurio, and Alan Bennett constantly inspire me.
In 2021, I worked on a project entitled ‘New Worlds: The Enchanted Forest’ with The Academy Of Ancient Music as part of the orchestra’s autumn season at the Barbican. More specifically, I provided a set of narrations that were interwoven between selected orchestral excerpts from Handel’s opera, ‘Alcina’, Rameau’s opera, ‘Dardanus’, and Geminiani’s pantomime-ballet, ‘The Enchanted Forest’. The narrations were read by Zoe Waites, and the orchestra was conducted by Laurence Cummings.
