open submissions festival | 2025
jack nicholls
writer: The Shitheads
ROYAL COURT THEATRE
MONUMENT
FRIDAY 11 APRIL, 19:45
By Jack Nicholls
Directed by David Byrne & Aneesha Srinivasan
APR, 8, 2025
Tens of thousands of years ago, Britain’s earliest inhabitants reckon with care, family, and the weather.
The inaugural festival runs from Monday 7 – Saturday 12 April in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs.
Hi Jack, it’s so great to talk with you ahead of this years inaugural Open Submissions. What was the first thing that came into your head when you found out The Shitheads was selected for the festival?
I was stunned, actually. David Byrne rang me out of the blue and said that he liked the play. I got off the tram at the wrong stop, walked around in a daze.
Your short film Nettle Day had its premiere at the Manchester Film Festival, what was this expense like and do you have plans for more short films in the future?
Excruciating beforehand, waiting to see if the audience would respond to it, and then when they did, lovely. I hadn’t experienced a film festival as a filmmaker before and Manchester Film Festival was as much fun as I had suspected it would be. I do have another short in post-production, really different from “Nettle Day” and “The Shitheads” –sort of an intense comedy.
Can you tell me how The Shitheads came about, what inspired your new play?
I was feeling a bit cynical about stories that seemed designed to re-affirm the audience’s faith in stories— people aren’t un-complicatedly good, obviously, and it felt misguided to suggest that stories could be. It seemed a reductive answer for narrative art to arrive at – though I think in a national moment where artists feel they are constantly having to plead their worth, not an unsurprising one. I thought it would be a good idea to kick around for a while, anyway, and then I saw a bowl made from a human skull in the Natural History Museum and things started to knit together.
...finish stuff. Even finish the hopeless stuff. I am bad at following this but trying to improve.
What where the biggest challenges you faced writing The Shitheads?
I started writing it just before the pandemic, and it was quite tricky to keep going throughout all that with what to me felt a quite ambitious piece of writing, when it felt like the future was so uncertain. And just keeping going, over years.
What has been the best piece of advice you’ve got as you started your own journey in theatre, and paying it forward what advice would you offer fellow theatre makers?
Same piece of advice for both: finish stuff. Even finish the hopeless stuff. I am bad at following this but trying to improve.
And finally, what would you hope your audiences will take away from The Shitheads?
It’s quite extreme in parts, but I hope people can see themselves in it.