Royal Court shows fresh talent

Every decade a list of the best young British novelists is announced. Laughably and, if we're honest, irresponsibly, the upper-age limit is set at 40. For any aspiring writers disappearing unpublished into their late thirties, this maintains the delusional fantasy that they are great novelists who just happen not to have written a novel yet. For an entire generation, it has been nothing short of a 20-year licence to procrastinate.

In theatre, they do things a little more ruthlessly. The Royal Court runs an annual young writers' programme called Exposure. If you're 26, forget it - you're too old. If you're 12, wait up - you can enter after your next birthday. It's as if the theatre's hunt for young writing ability has taken its cue from football, where eight-year-old talent is now spotted and nurtured by professional clubs.

But there may also be something slightly Jesuitical about the programme. Show the Royal Court the fledgling entrant and it will show you the future of British theatre. Previous graduates include Jonathan Harvey, Joe Penhall, Rebecca Prichard and Nick Grosso. Ayub Khan-Din and Hanif Kureishi - both nurtured by the Court as young playwrights - have offered practical support in the form of writers' workshops; Danny Boyle, Meera Sayal (who's acted in past young writers' programmes) and Kathy Burke have lent their names and other support.

There are eight winners from the 400 entrants. Four will have their plays performed in rehearsed readings. Four more will get full-scale runs in the Theatre Upstairs. Of those, two are chasteningly young: Holly Baxter Baine is 15 and Emmanuel de Nasciemento is 16.

Though they come from diverse backgrounds, the two young playwrights have found themselves travelling along similar paths. They both started writing under the wing of the Court. Baxter Baine did work experience there this summer, while de Nasciemento attended the month-long Breakpoint course last year. They were both encouraged by the Court to enter work they wrote while there.

Both plays deal with a youthful introduction to sex, albeit in sharply different ways. In Goodbye Roy, by Baxter Baine, an Indian woman bitterly recalls her father raping her as a child. In Drag-On, de Nasciemento's street-smart teenager finds himself attracted to a transvestite.

Both also give a voice to ethnic minorities heard all too little on the stage. It's significant that the young playwrights have gone outside their own experience. First-time novelists frequently dwell on what's happened to them, but, says Baxter Baine, "If I write about a child from West Hampstead, that's not really interesting. I find it so much easier to write about things that aren't about me. I read some annual reports from a charity called Newham Asian Women's Project which has personal stories about rape and abuse. That really got me wanting to write about it and let more people know about it."

Though demotic street and club life in Ealing are familiar to him, de Nasciemento also drew material from outside his world. "I was going to do some normal thing," he says, "but I was watching this Channel 4 drag queen documentary and thought, why not do a drag queen play? I just tried to get more details on drag queens, and read books."

The advice both received at the Court focused on defining characters, fashioning plot and structure. The scripts are uncluttered by stage directions, and both profess that it has been "amazing" to watch their own words, subject to interpretation, solidify into reality in rehearsal. The prospect of being judged by critics instils fear in neither: they both take the "it's just one person's opinion" line.

They also have pronounced views on what it is they want to see in the theatre. De Nasciemento feared the worst when he enrolled on the Breakpoint course. "When I first got into the Royal Court I heard the name and thought, old, posh people. I'll be the odd one out. They won't be having plays that I want to have on, they'll be having Romeo and Juliet and Old English literature." Since seeing The Weir and Dublin Carol, by Conor McPherson, he has changed his tune and is now bouncing his friends into sampling theatre. "I told them to come to see what it is. They just need to see it. They didn't expect it to be as laid-back." This echoes David Hare's line on securing theatre's future: ditch the classics and let young speak to young.