Laura Wade is an English playwright. She is the recipient of the Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright (2005) for Breathing Corpses and Colder Than Here.
Wade was born in Bedfordshire and grew up in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. She studied Drama at Bristol University and was a member of the Young Writers' Program at the Royal Court Theatre.
Wade's early plays were produced at the Sheffield Crucible Studio Theatre and the Bristol Old Vic Basement Theatre; she also worked Playbox Theatre, a children's theatre company, in Warwick. Her first show to premiere in London was an adaptation of W.H. Davies' Young Emma. It opened in December 2003 at the Finborough Theatre, where she was later Writer-in-Residence. In 2004, she became a writer on attachment at Soho Theatre, where her next play, Colder Then Here, was produced in February 2005. The following month, Breathing Corpses opened at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. Wade returned to the Soho Theatre in March 2006 with her next play, Other Hands.
In 2010, two new plays by Laura Wade made their premiere: Alice, a reworking of Alice in Wonderland, was staged at the Sheffield Crucible; and Posh opened to critical acclaim at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court Theatre in April. An updated script of Posh opened at the Duke of York's Theatre on May 11, 2012, marking Wade's West End debut. The play received its regional debut in February 2015 in a co-production by Nottingham Playhouse and Salisbury Playhouse, and was adapted to film (Lone Scherfig's The Riot Club).
Her next play, Tipping The Velvet, an adaptation of Sarah Walters' novel, premiered at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in September 2015 before transferring to the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. In 2018, Wade's Home, I'm Darling opened at Theatr Clwyd in July, before transferring to the National Theatre. Wade's adaptation of Jane Austen's unfinished story, The Watsons, premiered at the Chichester Festival Theatre in November of the same year.
In addition to her Critics' Circle Theatre Award, Laura Wade has received the Pearson Playwrights Best New Play Award (Breathing Corpses, 2006), the Pearson Playwrights Award Bursary (2004), the George Devine Award (jointly won for Breathing Corpses, 2006), and a nomination for the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre (Breathing Corpses and Colder Than Here, 2006).
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