Clare Norburn

Clare Norburn is a playwright, producer and retired singer. As a playwright, she has developed a new genre of concertplays and has written 14 projects to date, which have secured 4 and 5-star national reviews. Most of her work has been in partnership with BAFTA-nominated director Nicholas Renton. Clare is Artistic Director, playwright, producer and retired singer of The Telling, where music and theatre collide, for whom she has written: Empowered Women Trilogy (41+ performances and 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)  (“Spooks meets Blackadder with music-theatre, 16th Century-style); and What the Dickens? (2023) which saw Dickens’ reading of A Christmas Carol hijacked by his wife and mistress, with Dickens himself forced into Scrooge’s role to face up to his past, present and possible future. 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. As a singer, Clare sang as a soloist with many early music ensembles. Together with Deborah Roberts, Clare co-founded and co-ran Brighton Early Music Festival for 15 years.