Write the Girl is a partnership between schools and theatre professionals to support playwrights in creating the powerful, meaningful stories young women deserve. Schools select a play from our play-pack, commission a playwright, and collaborate on a creative journey from pen to stage. The result? New plays that feature large casts, challenge, and engage young women – often marginalised by a male-dominated canon – on the main stage.
Write The Girl
ISI Report 2025Pupils explore theatrical performance, write high-quality plays through the ‘write the girl’ initiative, create sophisticated artwork and develop their musical skills to a very high standard.
Why We Do It
There’s a shortage of plays with strong roles for young women, where they drive the action, not just ‘watch and weep’. Write the Girl fills this gap, providing opportunities for new works that give female students the chance to shine. Our aim is to bring these plays to life in schools and eventually showcase them in professional theatres. We also hope to make these plays available for GCSE and A Level performances.
What’s Involved
The project is designed to provide a wonderful experience for the writers, performers and schools which put on the productions and ultimately the audience. Writers are given the opportunity to develop their ideas, and through workshops to develop their ideas and be given constructive feedback on their proposals and help with commissioning their play to be written with full production in a school setting. The aim is to have these plays out on full public view in professional theatre settings and/or published for use in GCSE and A level performances.
Students are given the opportunity to perform in, direct and produce plays which feature narratives where the female characters are front and centre in their debut on the stage.
These plays also give the opportunity for collaboration with other schools for example, our play Lady Malcolm’s Ball which was a joint production with our neighbour school, Hampton and Team was performed by a cast of students from both LEH School and our local partner, Hampton High.
…The Girl Writes
This initiative encourages students to write their own plays with female-centric stories, which may be commissioned as Write the Girl productions. Students from participating schools get involved in the creative process, offering an avenue for constructive feedback and cross-school productions with Write the Girl playwrights offering mentorship. In June 2021, LEH Lower 6 playwrights, Diya Sengupta and Amy Brian presented their play Of Silent Words which went on to be one of 30 plays shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Playwriting.
Workshops and events
LEH regularly hosts afternoon workshops to inspire further collaboration between schools and playwrights as part of the Write the Girl scheme. Heads of Drama from state and independent schools nationwide come together with playwrights for a series of bespoke workshops and Q&A sessions to set out how this ground-breaking initiative can benefit schools. In the latest workshop, run with the help of Drama students from both LEH School and St Albans High School we discussed ideas and worked on bringing the playwrights’ proposals and short scripts to life with voice and movement.
The Future
We will continue producing Write the Girl plays each year and encouraging other schools to do the same. With …the Girl Writes we hope to be creating the next generation of great writers who will produce works which will offer more opportunities to those who have typically been underrepresented in the theatre world. We are also working on a …the Girl Directs programme in response to keen interest from our students, allowing them to work with more theatre professionals in this capacity. In that way, not only will Write the Girl have succeeded in producing more dynamic work for young women, but it will have also empowered them to write and direct their own.
