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Roy Williams

Headshot of Roy Williams

Roy Williams is an English playwright, born in London in 1968. His plays include Sing Yer Heart Out For the Lads and Days of Significance.

He has won various awards including, but not limited to, the Evening Standard Award for most Promising Playwright (2001), BAFTA Award for Best Schools Drama for Offside (2002) and South Bank Show Arts Council Decibel Award (2004). He supports Queens Park Rangers FC.

September 2023

  • Rafe Spall in Death of England at the National Theatre, London, in 2020.

    ‘We messed with some heads’: Roy Williams on tackling a torn nation in Death of England

    As his series co-created with Clint Dyer continues at the National Theatre, the playwright revisits how a Guardian microplay about sport led to a panorama of Britain in tumult

February 2019

  • Film-maker Barry Jenkins

    Barry Jenkins: ‘When you climb the ladder, you send it back down’

    It’s a thrilling time to be in movies, says the Oscar-winning director of If Beale Street Could Talk. He talks to playwright Roy Williams about his sky-high hopes for the next generation

March 2018

  • Martin Luther King pictured in Washington after delivering his ‘I have a dream’ speech on 28 August 1963.

    From Lennie James to Akala, black Britons celebrate Martin Luther King

    Half a century ago, Martin Luther King was assassinated and the civil rights movement lost its greatest leader. Here, prominent black British cultural figures discuss the power of his words

September 2014

  • Antigone rehearsals

    Roy Williams on Antigone: a play for today’s streets

    The theme of Sophocles’s tragedy is that power corrupts – which links ancient Greece with modern-day gang leaders

September 2009

  • Jimmy Akingbola as a prisoner in Roy Williams's new play Category B

    Black theatre's big breakout

    When he was starting out, Roy Williams could hardly find any other black British playwrights. Times have changed. But what are the new challenges facing black writers today?

May 2008

  • Film blog
    double quotation markWill black people's lives ever be as interesting as white people's?

    Roy Williams

    Spike Lee's attack on Clint Eastwood shows that the problems of black representation in mainstream culture are far from being resolved

April 2004

  • Shades of black

    Time for the racial myths on our screens and stages to be retired, says Roy Williams.

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