Maureen Lennon’s keynote speech from Fresh Ink 2025
To mark International Women’s Day 2026, we publish the transcript of Maureen Lennon’s keynote speech from Fresh Ink: Hull Playwriting Festival 2025
Maureen Lennon gives her keynote speech at Fresh Ink: Hull Playwriting Festival 2025. Photo by Jessy Zschorn.
Hello. Yeah so, I’m Maureen, I’m a Hull playwright and, in a crazy moment of over-confidence, I agreed to do this speech, so sorry for that and please be kind.
And don’t worry I’m going to try really hard not to wang on because [Middle Child] reminded me a surprising number of times to keep it short and snappy.
Maybe not surprising, if you’ve ever read the first draft of one of my plays: Matthew May's dramaturgical experience of working with me shining through strong there.
Anyway, I saw on social media that we’d advertised this as Maureen talks about her hopes for theatre making in her hometown. So, I thought I better do a bit of that.
I genuinely think Hull is a really unique and special place to be a playwright.
I think this is down in part to Hull having such a welcoming, innovative and committed community of artists and audiences. People who are genuinely willing to listen, change, adapt and support. Nowhere is that more evident than on the weekend we’ve just had and I credit Middle Child for helping to set the tone of this community. For taking chances on people, trusting playwrights and putting their money where their mouth is when trying to create an industry that can work for all of us.
Fresh Ink seems to me to fill a vital gap in our industry for playwrights on all levels. It is particularly hard to make the leap from writing or producing your own work into being paid, because so few regional theatres can afford to commission for their studio and the leap into being commissioned for the main stage feels so massive.
It feels like Fresh Ink saw this gap and leapt into the breach, providing a paid pipeline for playwrights at all levels of experience to develop, experiment, dream, step up and show they can be trusted. And honestly, the breadth and depth of the work on display this weekend shows why that is such an exciting and transformative choice.
But, when I was thinking about what my hopes were for the city and for writing, what I actually wanted to talk about was what happens when we start to look beyond project-to-project: that great unspoken, unsolvable problem of sustaining this momentum, of playwriting as a ‘career’.
So boldly, I’ve given this speech a new title and that is: “Is it possible to be a mid-career playwright? Or, Art full-time: dream or nightmare?” Snappy.
I suppose I’m interested in this because in the last few years I’ve felt myself moving from that ‘emerging’ to ‘mid-career’ bracket and I’ve found it harder than I anticipated. I don’t think it will be groundbreaking to anyone to hear that there is not a lot of money in writing plays, or, you know, in theatre in general. This is something I knew of course. I have always worked other jobs alongside writing, but I think I presumed that at a certain level the need to do this would decrease.
“In rehearsals, I had to take on three more minimum wage jobs, alongside my already existing rota of teaching, facilitating and, when lucky, writing”
In my experience, it takes an average of five-ish years for an idea to go to from your brain to the stage. To earn £27,000 a year, a number that feels unimaginable for lots of us but is significantly below the national UK average of £37,000, you would need to have three full-length plays on a year, paid at ITC rates. If they’re going to take you five years each, that would mean you would need 15 commissions ongoing at a time. EASYYYY. Or you know, impossible and unheard of.
In 2022 I had two plays on; in 2024 three; and, in 2025, one. So far, actually as this speech is going to show very available for work if anyone is interested in boosting that number.
This was actually a kind of mad flurry of creative output that left me close to burnout but, also, skint, meaning at the beginning of this year, whilst in rehearsals, I had to take on three more minimum wage jobs, alongside my already existing rota of teaching, facilitating and, when lucky, writing.
This was not only difficult because of time and mental space, but also because, if I’m honest, it felt like I had failed some sort of success test.
I realised that in the absence of metrics that are available to measure ‘progression’ in other jobs - bonuses, promotions, salary progression, job security, benefits - I was using ‘art full-time’ as a way of measuring the worth of my career. As a way of convincing myself that I was ‘proper’, a salve after yet another family gathering where someone asked after my ‘hobbies’, meaning my writing, or told my partner that I was so lucky to have him to look after me.
That last one might actually be a reference to our personalities, rather than our finances, in which case, as those of you who’ve met both of us will know, totally fair enough.
I was using paying my way with playwriting as a way to prove that I wasn’t just kidding myself. And it was failing. And for the first time I felt like it might never work, and maybe there was a limit in how much I was willing to give up while trying.
Another truth, linked, but perhaps harder to talk about than the purely financial, is that theatre’s diversity problem really comes into sharp focus when you start to look at who is allowed to ‘emerge’, and step into mid-career. There is a huge gap between the identities of people who are making smaller-scale, self-funded, ‘emerging’ work, and who is writing the work on our stages at mid and main scale. I think it is not insignificant that in the last couple of years, when I found myself making this transition, I have felt myself most aware of my identity as a female playwright.
It feels like sometimes there is a sense that we have talked about the problem of gender parity on our stages so much that we have solved it. And in fact, recently, alongside the global regression of women’s rights we are experiencing, I have felt a backlash within theatre too: an idea that woman have had their moment and it is time, once again, to prioritise male stories and perspectives. So, I thought it was just worth reminding ourselves of the stats, stats that are actually hard to find because it is not an area ACE is currently prioritising.
“I was repeatedly asked in pitching meetings how men would feel about my plays, or why they should be interested in female stories”
In 2013 Lyn Gardner wrote an article titled “In 10 years nothing has changed for female playwrights, it’s time to act”. In it she outlined how in 2003 30% of new plays were produced by female playwrights and in 2013 it was 31%. Well, the latest figures I could find were from 2022, and it was 26%. I’ll let that speak for itself. A reminder too that women are over 50% of the population and over 50% of our audiences, so really it’s time we got our bit of the pie.
These stats also do not expose all the other pressures that female writers face: the absence of maternity leave, judgement about motherhood, the difference in critical responses to their voices and the frequent impossibility of advocating for yourself and what you need in fear of being seen as ‘difficult’. We celebrate ‘angry young men’ as a whole artistic genre, but every woman knows that if they are to be labelled as ‘angry’, it will be used as a derision of their craft and its artistic merit. No one wants to work with a difficult woman.
Despite knowing all this, secretly, until recently I thought I would be the exception. I would make it, because I had a little pulse in my chest that beat on, this is what I was meant to be doing and, if I just kept going, none of that would matter to me.
I thought this even after I was repeatedly asked in pitching meetings how men would feel about my plays, or why they should be interested in female stories.
I thought it even as an artistic director started a phone call with “Maureen, I’ve been searching for a funny female playwright and there just aren’t any”, and later, ghosted me.
I thought it after I was asked by a male director not to speak in the rehearsal room of a play dealing with female experiences of misogyny, or when I realised the crazy amount of emotional labour I was expected to do alongside, actually you know, writing.
I thought it when I understood that even now, in 2025, one of my chief worries in considering whether to ‘baby or not to baby’, was that I would lose my whole career, and that I was embarrassed to admit how much of my head that was taking up.
I thought it even when my friends had to comfort me that, sexist undertones aside, “Maureen Lennon: ‘Hysterical, angry, and loud’ Two Stars”, would make a brilliant Instagram bio.
I thought it until suddenly early this year I didn’t think it anymore. Suddenly I stopped, that little bit of me went out. And suddenly I had to ask who I was if I wasn’t a playwright, if this was truly what I was meant to be doing and what it was costing to just keep going.
I want to address something here. It is possible that all of this might just be solved if I wrote better plays. Or in different words, it is possible what I am saying here sounds a bit like: “Maureen took all the commissions in Hull and still she’s whingeing on.” And don’t worry, that is something I am thinking about. A lot.
Because, honestly, there is probably a bit of truth in that.
I have been so lucky in my career, because of Hull, its companies and its artists. I have been given opportunities that I am incredibly grateful for, have had the support of companies and teams that are full of complete magic and have had the privilege of working with brilliant human beings. I also carry an immense amount of privileges in this space: I am white, middle class, cis, non- disabled, I have a partner who doesn’t work in the arts and gets, holy grail, a proper salary.
But I suppose what I am saying is if I am feeling a fraction of these things, then know that it is a much, much rougher ride for so many, and until we start investing in not just getting people into this industry, but keeping them in it, we will not see the change we want. We will not have a theatre industry which is reflective of our world, and we will not have the brilliant, dynamic, courageous plays we have seen examples of this weekend, on our main stages.
“Know that the way the industry, critics and audiences responds to them might be different, and you must back them nonetheless”
So what do we do? Or you know, what are my hopes after all these complaints?
Since that was what I was meant to talk about. And truthfully, I don’t have many of the answers, that’s the great thing about being a playwright: normally you just get to chuck out a load of problems, call it plot and everyone thinks you’re brilliant.
But, I do think we in Hull are uniquely placed to solve this problem, because we are already doing so much to nurture and care for playwrights, and because I genuinely believe our companies want to change things and to look after the writers in their care. And, because as a small corner of the world, we have permission to try things no one else will dare, and a large dollop of fuck you Hull spirit and grit to get us all through.
So here are just a few things I think would help.
Continue to commission and programme diverse writers, women writers, for your big stages, and know that the way the industry, critics and audiences responds to them might be different, and you must back them nonetheless.
Support them as you launch them into bigger opportunities, make it clear there is the right to fail. Do not leave them feeling the weight of critical and commercial success on their own. Too often I think however much that rehearsal room might feel like a collaboration, a new play’s success or failure is often left on the writer’s shoulders, and when everyone else has moved on they are left to cradle it’s remains.
Think big picture when considering how you can support artists. It is not always about project-to-project. Is there a way you could give writers space and time and money to think big brilliant thoughts, beyond project-to-project lumps of cash?
And other playwrights, a transition for me, in terms of my thinking, which might just be bullshit, but I’m going to say it out loud anyway: maybe art full-time is not the dream.
“To write even one play is a wild, gutsy, thing to do”
For most of the time there have been playwrights, or writers, doing it full-time, being a ‘career’ writer who lives off your work, has been impossible. Art was never meant to be a commercial venture and unfortunately, we live in a capitalist world. So, in the absence of proper funding, and since the tradition of rich aristocratic patrons funding individual writers forevermore seems to have died a death…
Although if secretly any rich aristocrats are hanging out in a tent in Hull, then you know, I’m very open to the possibility, and although this speech may make me seem like a gobshite liability, I want to reassure you I can be bought for a surprisingly small amount of cash.
But, in the absence of that, maybe it is time we stopped putting the pressure on ourselves to make the impossible pay. That we stopped apologising for our other jobs, which we have often fought hard for, and may well make us better writers in the long-run. To allow ourselves to slow down, be kinder if there is less creative output, refuse the rat race of what next, what next, what next?
To write even one play is a wild, gutsy, thing to do. The bravery of putting a bit of yourself, a bit of your heart, in front of other people can never be over-estimated and to do it again and again takes real courage. There will always be a cost. I think it’s time we balanced the books a bit on how much that is worth.
So my hope, my main big bold hope, is that our industry learns a little bit better how to treasure that bravery and invests time money and big picture thinking into keeping those little bits of heart beating, into keeping us in our industry, because, in the words of feminist icon of our generation Self Esteem, we deserve to be here.
Thank you.
*Since Maureen’s speech last summer, the British Theatre Consortium have released a new report, which shows the number of new writing commissions by women has increased slightly, however the number of performances of new writing commissions by women has decreased slightly.
Maureen Lennon is a playwright from Hull, whose work for Middle Child includes Baby, He Loves You and Us Against Whatever.
You can also watch a recording of A List of All the People More Fucked Than Me, written by Maureen for Three Minute Monologues with The Warren Youth Project, on YouTube.