
Clare Norburn
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR / PLAYWRIGHT / PRODUCER
Clare Norburn is a playwright and producer. As a playwright, she has developed a new genre of concertplays, most with BAFTA-nominated director Nicholas Renton including Galileo (2020) for the Monteverdi String Band and the Marian Consort, Breaking the Rules (2015) for the Marian Consort, Creating Carmen (2019) for CarmenCo and Beethoven’s Quartet Journey for the Dante Quartet (2016).
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She is Artistic Director and Producer of The Telling, where music and theatre collide for whom she has written: Empowered Women Trilogy (35+ performances & 3 films, selected by The Guardian as an online classical highlight of summer 2020), Love in the Lockdown (2021), an online play with music in nine episodes, starring Alec Newman and Rachael Stirling, I, Spie (2021) which pushed the concertplay format where Spooks meets Blackadder with music-theatre, 16th Century-style and What the Dickens? (2023): Dickens’ is forced into the role of Scrooge and taken on a journey of his past, present and possible future by his estranged wife, young mistress and a band of musicians.
Clare’s productions have toured UK festivals and venues including LSO St Luke’s, Bridgewater Hall and St John’s Smith Square.
In 2023, Clare was selected as one of seven out of hundreds of applications to receive mentoring from BBC’s sister development company, The Space to rewrite an adaption of Love in the Lockdown for BBC Radio. In October 2023, she won The Colin Skipp Memorial Cup, a Radio-Playwriting competition with The End, Roll Credits about TV playwright Dennis Potter’s famous TV interview with Melvyn Bragg.
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Clare retired from singing at the end of 2024 to focus on writing, producing and running The Telling. She has sung as a soloist with ensembles including The Telling and, back in the 00s, Mediva (finalists in the York International Young Artists Competition and Southbank Centre’s Fresh Young Artists), performing at The Purcell Room, Bridgewater Hall and festivals including Spitalfields Music, Brighton Festival, Newbury Spring Festival and Buxton International Festival. Together with Deborah Roberts, Clare co-founded and co-ran Brighton Early Music Festival for 15 years.