Fuse Box: Testimonial Playwriting

Verbatim & Testimonial Playwriting — Kate Austen (6 Mar)

Playwright and theatre-maker Kate Austen will lead a masterclass on testimonial and verbatim playwriting. Learn how to sharpen your topic, and shape material drawn from lived experience by working with real people. 

Kate will break down her process for gathering testimony, handling sensitive issues safely, and turning real voices into engaging characters. This session gives you practical tools to create work that’s authentic, urgent and rooted in truth.

About Kate:

Kate Austen is a writer and theatre maker from Essex. She studied BA Acting at East 15, and has worked in the industry for more than fifteen years across a wide range of theatre, including touring, outdoor productions, T.I.E., and the Edinburgh Fringe.

Her first play, Find Me, was a self-verbatim exploration of female identity, developed from a year’s worth of voice notes and collaborative devising. After workshops with actors, it was later staged at The Vaults in Waterloo. The process sparked her passion for writing, inspiring her to create new worlds and characters from the ground up. In 2020, while pregnant with her son, she joined the prestigious John Burgess Playwriting Group—where her baby quickly became the unofficial group member.

In 2021, she was commissioned by the Minack Theatre in Cornwall to write a site-specific play for their youth theatre, an experience she found especially meaningful. Working closely with young performers helped shape the piece, and she was later touched to learn that one of the participants had even written a sequel.

Kate was a Mercury Theatre playwright in 2023/24, developing a play about the eviction of Travellers from Dale Farm in Essex. Her research process was extensive: she studied documentaries, consulted journalist Katharine Quarmby, author of No Place to Call Home, and, through that connection, conducted verbatim interviews with Father Dan Mason, the priest who supported the Travellers during the eviction. She also attended Mass to deepen her understanding of Catholicism. The play The Farm is currently being considered by several theatres.

Ongoing learning remains central to her practice; to approach sensitive subjects responsibly, she has completed Trauma-Informed Practice training and is a qualified Mental Health First-Aider.

Find Kate at www.kateausten.co.uk

WHO IS IT FOR?
Fuse Box is a six-week series of in-person theatre workshops for actors, writers, directors and creatives, delivered by Essex-based company Blown Fuse at Theatre Deli Leadenhall, London.

These workshops are designed for artists seeking to sharpen their craft, expand their creative toolkit and build meaningful industry connections. Whether you are an early-career theatre-maker or a more experienced artist refreshing your skills, Fuse Box offers a space to experiment, to collaborate, and to ignite new ideas.

Access & Inclusion

• We warmly welcome all participants, including those with access needs, and we are committed to doing our best to accommodate individual requirements. While we cannot guarantee step-free access at all of our workshops, we will always work with you to find the most suitable arrangements and ensure you feel supported. If you have any access needs or questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at blownfusetheatre@gmail.com so we can discuss how to make your experience as comfortable as possible.

QUERIES
Please contact us at blownfusetheatre@gmail.com for any questions or queries.

🎟 Tickets
Single workshop: £35
Full 6-workshop pass: £175 (equivalent to one workshop free)

🗓 Friday 6th March 2026 7–9pm
📍 Theatre Deli, Leadenhall (London)

Capacity is limited to 12 participants per workshop to ensure high-quality, practice-based learning.

Book now!