Female playwrights on the rise

The world of the playwright has long been male-dominated, from Shakespeare to Pinter.

But following the first play by a living female writer ever to be staged at the Olivier, a host of young British talent is set to rise through the playwrights' ranks.Rebecca Lenkiewicz's Her Naked Skin, the play in question, was a landmark in theatrical history and has paved the way for women playwrights with exciting new offerings on the horizon.

22-year-old Polly Stenham's second play Tusk Tusk has recently completed a two-month sell-out run at the Royal Court Theatre in London, while Atiha Sen Gupta's What Fatima Did, about a Muslim schoolgirl, is set to become the central work for the Hampstead Theatre's autumn season of new works.

Meanwhile Ella Hickson's Eight, which has already won a Fringe First award at the Edinburgh Festival, has made her the youngest writer to be taken on by publishers Nick Hern. The play, consisting of eight monologues concerning the state of modern Britain, is now set to transfer to the Trafalgar Studios in the West End.

And with 28-year-old Lucy Prebble, the woman behind the TV hit The Secret Diary of a Call Girl, having already enlisted Rupert Goold's theatre company Headlong to tour her new play about Enron, it seems British women playwrights have finally broken down some barriers.