The award-winning writer of Shook grew up on an estate and did not see his world represented on stage. When he acknowledged his shame about his background, he found his voice
In 2019, Samuel Bailey’s play Shook marked him out as a distinctive new talent, writing about masculinity, class and friendship. But when he first began life as a playwright, his dramas were, he says, “rip-offs” of works he admired. “The first few plays I wrote were a Sam Shepard western, a Nick Payne Constellations play, and an Annie Baker. I was thinking: ‘Oh, this is what a play is!’”
Having grown up on a housing estate in Worcester, Bailey felt reluctant to bring that world on to the stage. “It took me quite a long time to feel like I could write about where I came from and that people would be interested in it, partly because it wasn’t necessarily what I was seeing on stage.”
