Matt Smith is to become the next patron of the Royal Court’s Young Writers Festival, which runs from 23 February to 14 April at the Sloane Square venue.
Best-known as the danger-thwarting Time Lord, Smith’s professional career began at the Royal Court where, in 2004, he appeared in Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder’s Fresh Kills as part of a special young playwrights season.
Since then he has appeared in That Face at the Royal Court, On The Shore Of The Wide World, The History Boys and Chatroom/Citizenship at the National Theatre, as well as the television series Party Animals.
The Doctor Who star follows a host of other celebrity patrons, including Ray Winstone, Catherine Tate, Ruth Jones and Kathy Burke.
Featuring full productions of Luke Norris’s play Goodbye To All That and Hayley Squires’s Vera Vera Vera as well as four staged readings, ten short plays, a series of free workshops and late night events in the bar, this year’s Young Writers Festival will be the biggest in the event’s history.
Since it was established in 1973, the bi-annual festival has launched a number of writers, including Christopher Shinn, Bola Agbaje, Leo Butler, Andrea Dunbar, DC Moore, Michael Wynne, Chloe Moss and Simon Stephens, whose dark new thriller Three Kingdoms will play at the Lyric Hammersmith later this spring.
KS