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Our Early Career Dramaturgy working group undertook a survey of script readers in the UK, designed to understand the circumstances in which script reading for theatres and companies is undertaken.

We found that, as a per-hour rate, many theatres pay effectively under minimum wage – some averaging out as little as £5 per hour. 

You can read the article in The Stage here: Dramaturgs 'criminally undervalued' in terms of pay, survey reveals.

And a longer piece can be found on the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) website: UK Script-Readers Often Work for Below Minimum Wage.

The Young Vic Creators Program and Dramaturgs’ Network are bringing together 24 dramaturgs and 24 creatives over 2 sessions on Tuesday 10 October. This is a chance for members of both organisations to meet, get to know each other, talk about their work, and find new collaborators.

The format will be half speed-meeting and half casual mingling. In the first half, each dramaturg and each creator will have a chance to introduce themselves in a couple of minutes. In the second half, everyone will have the opportunity to chat casually and discuss anything that sparked their interest in the first half.

We will be aiming to select a mixture of creators with different experiences and at different stages in their careers to have a wide range of participants.

You can express your interest here (deadline 10am on Friday 15 September) – but you need to be a member of the YV Creators' Programme in order to access this opportunity.

On the anniversary of our Dramaturgs' Contract Package, we were delighted to host a roundtable on post-pandemic working conditions, in partnership with Stage Directors UK and Freelancers Make Theatre Work. 

We discussed the working conditions of freelance theatre professionals in the UK since the end of the pandemic, and focussed in particular on the findings of SDUK's 2023 Census and FMTW's Big Freelancer Report.

A big thank-you to our participants – David Harris, Jarkko Lehmus, Katalin Trencsényi (d’n), Mimi Doulton (FMTW) and Harold Finley (SDUK) – and to all who came!