Jim Burke
Jim Burke is a playwright originally from Manchester, England. Amongst his plays are Cornered and an adaptation of Moby Dick, both of which won Best New Play in the Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards. He has had several plays produced on BBC Radio and has an original drama in development for Granada Television.
‘North West Playwrights gave me my first break and a hefty kick up the backside in 1996, when The Man Who Would Be Bing, a play I'd started as a half-hearted joke, suddenly became a (sort of) serious proposition when it was chosen for summer workshopping. They went on to seed-fund a full production of that play as well as my follow-up, Cornered; then brought serious money and lots of creative support to the table for my adaptation of Moby Dick (co-produced by Kaboodle and Walk the Plank). NWP also helped keep the wolf from the door for many years by giving me work as a script reader, dramaturg, and tutor.
‘I'm resident in Montreal now, and have set up a company, Funhouse Theatre, with a fellow ex-pat-Brit playwright called Neil Scotten (www.funhousetheatre.net). I'm also a member of Playwrights Workshop Montreal, an NWP-style organisation (I know - there's only one NWP) with whom I'm developing a long-cherished adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Possessed.'