In 2018, Nick Hern Books (NHB) celebrated 30 years of theatrical publishing and performing rights licensing. The publisher has a long-held and close relationship with the drama education community, as was evidenced by the constant stream of teachers I had to negotiate in order to catch up with Marketing Manager Jon Barton by the NHB stand at the Music & Drama Education Expo.
‘We're talking to lots of people today who are looking for plays with unassigned dialogue so that it's more flexible for different cast sizes,’ says Barton, ‘We're always on the lookout for plays that we can publish alongside professional premieres at big theatres around the UK and in Ireland, but because we also license for performance, we always have that in mind when we're thinking what to acquire: we're not just thinking ‘we love this play’ we're also thinking ‘are people still going to be performing this in five, ten years’ time?’ Because we're really invested in the long life of our plays – and schools and youth groups are a big part of our thinking when we're looking for that. So we always have the end user in mind when we're reading the scripts – how is this going to work for teachers and for their students?’
NHB know their market really well: personally, in fact. ‘Our Performing Rights team are encyclopaedic in their knowledge of the list’ explains Barton, ‘Tamara [von Werthern, NHB's Performing Rights Manager] has been working for 15+ years at NHB so she knows every play there is! She's so good on the phone: people phone her up, give her fragments of information about what they're looking for, and she will knit that together and find them exactly the right play.’
The inspection copy service means that teachers can have a hard copy of the play they're considering for up to 30 days. If they read and decide that the play doesn't suit their needs, they can send it back at no charge.
While Tamara is a valuable resource, Barton points out that NHB also have a Play Finder service on the Plays to Perform website, where you can search the full list by certain criteria including genre, cast size, age group and theme, and so on.
‘Teachers are so pushed for time,’ Barton acknowledges, ‘so we do anything we can to take away the burden of going through every single play – because we have well over 1000 plays at this point which is quite daunting!’
And the list is constantly expanding: ‘We're always on the lookout for professional things that we can be publishing,’ Barton says, ‘but we've also moved into commissioning, with partners.’
The Platform series, developed with Tonic Theatre, is an excellent example of this. ‘Tonic did all sorts of research into just how poorly young women are catered for in drama classes and youth groups: how little there is out there that's appropriate for them without making girls play male roles, and so on. So they commissioned and we then published a series of scripts which they developed with great writers, which are brand new for those age groups and casts. We publish so much of what's being done, but if it's just not there, we ask: what can we do to go out and help make it?’
Multiplay Drama, a brand new series of large-cast plays written for older teenagers and young adults (commissioned originally by drama schools and youth theatres including the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and National Youth Theatre) is another example of NHB's tenacity in seeking out and publishing work for this market. Written by a mix of established writers and distinctive new voices, the company explains that the plays have been selected not just for their bold, ambitious storytelling, but also for the wealth and number of roles they offer to younger actors. Extracts from all ten plays are available to read at www.multiplaydrama.co.uk, with the full scripts also available upon request to those considering a production.
As well as playtexts, of course, NHB produce practical books including the very popular Drama Games series; the Good Audition Guides collections of audition monologues; the So You Want To… series, covering a wide range of theatre professions; and practical skills books such as the Complete Stanislavsky and Complete Brecht Toolkits. ‘The word that [Managing Director and Commissioning Editor] Matt Applewhite always uses is ‘useful’,’ says Barton, ‘How can we be ‘useful’ to teachers and students? In that respect we consider ourselves a professional and development publisher. The underpinning of skills and practice is really what we try and provide: what Drama teachers are actually using up on their feet in the classroom. It's not necessarily the book that you'll cite in an essay, it's the one that you'll have on your shelf and will reach for so many times in the course of your career that eventually you'll need to buy another one because after twenty years it'll just be thumbed to death and full of highlights and post-it notes.’
We consider ourselves a professional and development publisher
On this matter, if you've an area of expertise to share, NHB are always ready to hear from you. ‘Most of our books are written by people who do the job themselves,’ says Barton. ‘They're books by practitioners for practitioners, people who know what it's like to be in a classroom with a group of 16-year-olds.’ If you are one of those people and you've spotted a gap in the publisher's output which you think you can fill, Applewhite and the team are always ready to hear from you: email submission@nickhernbooks.co.uk
Tamara's tipsI set Tamara von Werthern, Nick Hern Books’ Performing Rights Manager, some tasks to suggest plays to drama teacher-criteria. Here's what she came up with:
- A large-cast play to perform with a Primary School group: Philip Pullman's Grimm Tales adapted by Philip Wilson
- A whole-school Secondary play which can incorporate students aged 11-18: Arabian Nights adapted by Dominic Cooke
- A school play for a boys’ school, cast size 10+: Pressure by David Haig
- A play for an all-female 6th form group, cast size 6-8: Be My Baby by Amanda Whittington
- A really great 2-hander: Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons by Sam Steiner
- A fabulous one-person play, gender non-specific: Misty by Arinzé Kene