Since he exploded into the international theatrical consciousness with his full length debut play Disco Pigs in 1997 Enda Walsh has been a sparkling presence in European playwriting.

April De Angelis has been writing for the theatre since the mid –eighties. Starting her career as an actor for the significant feminist theatre company Monstrous Regiment, she wrote her first play Breathless in 1987.

This afternoon Simon won’t just be interviewing one of the world’s leading playwrights, but two of them together: Dennis Kelly & Joe Penhall.

Few playwrights that arrived on British stages in the last ten years have provoked more fascination or excitement than Polly Stenham.

The plays of David Hare have dramatised and counterpointed the political and moral landscape of Britain and its position in our world for nearly fifty years.

The career of Rachel De-lahay might be described as the platonic form of a young Royal Court playwright’s career in the 21st century.

Alistair McDowall made his Royal Court debut as part of the Open Court season in 2013 with Talk Show, a tender exploration of a teenage fantasist. His most recent play X enjoyed massive success in the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs last year.

One of the most enjoyable periods in my working career was the five years I spent between 2001 and 2006 working as the Writers’ Tutor at the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers Programme…It is always fascinating to ask myself if I had noticed anything in the spirit of say Jack Thorne, for example, or Mike Bartlett, Laura Wade or Chloe Moss that even in their early career marked them out as likely to succeed. With the case of Lucy Prebble my answer is unequivocal. Some writers have a spark of vitality about them from the start that marks them out as exceptional.

It strikes me that, while it may be true that all artists are defined by their contradictions, few playwrights are defined by contradictions quite so thrilling as Anthony Neilson is. Over the last 25 years he has proved himself to be one of the most consistently surprising and exciting playwrights working in British theatre.

Anya Reiss’ debut play ‘Spur of the Moment’ opened upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre in 2010 when she was 18 years old…A writer of vitality, wit and compassionate tenderness.

Robert Holman’s compassion is matched only by his sense of formal boldness; his linguistic precision matched by his sense of stage imagery and honesty.

The plays of Tanika Gupta are as defined by a vitality and spirit of intelligent transgression as much as they are a piercing observation of the mores and tropes of the worlds that surround her.