Barney Norris – författare

Home is a moment that's quickly lost. Afterwards you can only sail through the ghost of it.The Wellspring explores the complex and shifting dynamic between a father and son, as the writer Barney Norris and the musician David Owen Norris overlay the palimpsests of their separate lives in a cycle of memories that gradually intertwine and become a concerted search for connection, belonging and home. The Wellspring opened at the Royal and Derngate, Northampton, in March 2022.

I wish there could be a day where families came together and just said it all to each other. Because then everyone would know it all, and there'd be nothing left to hurt anyone.Sussex. London. Wiltshire. Northamptonshire. Wales. Over three decades, a family spreads across the country, and the chord they made together starts to fray, the distance between them changing the music of their lives.Barney Norris's We Started to Sing is a love song to the people who raised him, and a hymn to the bravery of our brief lives. The play premiered at the Arcola Theatre, London, in May 2022.

- I think the local community's supportive.- Yeah, of like, good stuff. Bric-a-brac sales and choral singing and local elections and swingers' parties, not you and me messing about with a drum kit.Joe, Ross and Ellie used to be in a band. They were pretty good too, making waves across a rugged patchwork of pubs and clubs. They even had a song on Radio 2. But that was all a long time ago and the songs, the stories, the secrets are long since buried. Time has thrown the three friends far from their younger selves.Back together for one night only to play a benefit gig in their home town, they find a community reeling from a poisoning and a pandemic. And as they rehearse the old songs, the stories and secrets must also be excavated.The Band Back Together premiered in a touring production by Farnham Maltings in March 2024.

They say that, when you start getting older. Anything you wanna be able to do, keep doing it often cos you'll never get it back. I thought they meant touching your toes or running 5K, I didn't think they meant getting on trams.Ian has gone out less since he became a widower. In fact, he hasn't gone out at all, and his relationship with his daughter Lauren is suffering. But when charity volunteer Raz finds Ian in the garden wearing his late wife's dress, an unlikely friendship develops. Before long, Ian finds himself back in the local working men's club, preparing to give the performance of his life.Going Out Out is an infectiously joyous story about music, love and the courage it takes to cope with grief. It opened at HOME, Manchester, in October 2025.

Theatre has a funny way of getting to the heart of who we are now and – particularly in the case of Connections – who we are going to be.Drawing together the work of nine leading playwrights, National Theatre Connections 2018 features work by some of the most exciting contemporary playwrights. Gathered together in one volume, the plays offer young performers an engaging selection of material to perform, read or study.From friends building bridges and siblings breaking down walls; girls making their voice heard and boys searching for home; and not forgetting a band of unlikely action heroes taking control of the weather.The anthology contains nine play scripts along with imaginative production notes and exercises, as well as a short introduction to the writing process for the tenth Connections play [ BLANK ] by Alice Birch.National Theatre Connections is an annual festival which brings new plays for young people to schools and youth theatres across the UK and Ireland. Commissioning exciting work from leading playwrights, the festival exposes actors aged 13-19 to the world of professional theatre-making, giving them full control of a theatrical production - from costume and set design to stage management and marketing campaigns. NT Connections have published over 150 original plays and regularly works with 500 theatre companies and 10,000 young people each year.

In The Wellspring acclaimed novelist and dramatist Barney Norris conducts a conversation with his father, the pianist and composer David Owen Norris – ‘quite possibly the most interesting pianist in the world’ (Toronto Globe and Mail) and ‘a famous thinker/philosopher of the keyboard’ (Seattle Times) – about the nature of creativity, of Englishness, and of the changing world. Divided into three parts – ‘Listening’, ‘Playing’ and ‘Writing’ –The Wellspring is the first book to explore David Owen Norris’s fifty-year career and discover how his background (non-metropolitan, C of E, literary) influenced his choices and his music. The book becomes a study of the relationship between his Englishness and his work, of his inheritance and how it is projected forward into new compositions and new performance. In the process the reader encounters a fascinating world of concerts, prizes, collaborations, and inspirations, in which Norris, always open to the different, has lived. This variety includes Norris’s devotion to Parry and Elgar, his musical discoveries made playing the square piano of the nineteenth century, and the opportunities resulting from the pressurized world of competitions. In addition to exploring the career of this renowned musician, the father-son conversation also reveals Barney Norris’s experience of working in English theatre over the last ten years and of his practice as a novelist with a growing reputation. Their combined experience, in two fields, in two different generations, provides a thought-provoking discussion of how a place and a culture inform artistic work, and how England and Englishness have evolved during the past half century.

On a farmhouse at the edge of Salisbury Plain, a family is falling apart. Stephen can’t afford to put his mother into care; Arthur can’t afford to stop working and look after his wife. When a young stranger with blue hair moves in to care for Edie as her mind unravels, the family are forced to ask: are we living the way we wanted? Visitors is a haunting, beautiful look at the way our lives slip past us.Critics Circle Award 2014 for Most Promising Playwright.Winner of the Best New Play Award at the Off West End Theatre Awards 2014.Shortlisted for the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright and the Writers Guild of Great Britain 2014 award for Best Play.

A love song, an elegy, a celebration: Eventide tells the story of three people whose worlds are disappearing. John is a landlord forced to sell up; Liz is a church organist who can't get a gig; Mark takes what work he can just to pay the rent. Their tales unfold round the back of a pub hidden deep in the heart of the Hampshire countryside - a heart that doesn't seem to be beating any more. Eventide is the latest collaboration between playwright Barney Norris and director Alice Hamilton following the sell-out success of Visitors in 2014. Greeted as 'extraordinary' (Guardian) and 'heartbreaking' (New York Times), Visitors won the Critics' Circle and Off West End Most Promising Playwright Awards.

Three short plays from the multi-award-winning writer of VisitorsAt First Sight: Two young people meet and spend a New Year together in Salzburg. Holly is there on holiday with her parents; Jack plays piano in the hotel bar. Their story is told through a collage of exchange and recollection. At First Sight toured the UK and ended at the Latitude Festival, 2011. Winner of the Drama Association of Wales One Act Play Competition.Fear Of Music:Luke is the first in his family to go to university, and he’s determined to stop his irritating fireball of a brother from following in their father’s footsteps by joining the army. Vivid, detailed and often hilarious, Fear of Music time-bends between 1987 and 1993, piecing together the prelude and aftermath of a tragedy that sees history repeating itself.Every You Every Me: Every You Every Me is a play about coping, Kurt Cobain, rebellion, revolution, opening your A-level results, choosing your life and the pressure of systems on kids.A new play exploring teenagers’ mental health issues, performed at the Salisbury Playhouse Salberg Studio.

A Times bestseller'Wonderful...I was hooked from the first page. It's the real stuff.' - Michael Frayn'Deeply affecting' - Guardian'Superb' - Mail on Sunday'Barney Norris is a rare and precious talent' - Evening Standard'There exists in all of us a song waiting to be sung which is as heart-stopping and vertiginous as the peak of the cathedral. That is the meaning of this quiet city, where the spire soars into the blue, where rivers and stories weave into one another, where lives intertwine.'One quiet evening in Salisbury, the peace is shattered by a serious car crash. At that moment, five lives collide – a flower seller, a schoolboy, an army wife, a security guard, a widower – all facing their own personal disasters. As one of those lives hangs in the balance, the stories of all five unwind, drawn together by connection and coincidence into a web of love, grief, disenchantment and hope that perfectly represents the joys and tragedies of small town life.Barney Norris's third novel, The Vanishing Hours, will be published in July 2019.

The deeply moving second novel from the author of the award-winning FIVE RIVERS MET ON A WOODED PLAIN.'Courageous...memorable...moving' - Guardian'One of our most exciting young writers' - The Times'Life-affirming, beautiful and achingly poignant' - Donal Ryan'Isn’t the life of any person made up out of the telling of two tales, after all? The whole world makes more sense if you remember that everyone has two lives, their real lives and their dreams, both stories only a tape’s breadth apart from each other, impossibly divided, indivisibly close.'Every year, Robert's family comes together at a rambling old house to celebrate his birthday. Aunts, uncles, distant cousins - it has been a milestone in their lives for decades. But this year Robert doesn't want to be reminded of what has happened since they last met - and nor, for quite different reasons, does his granddaughter Kate. Neither of them is sure they can face the party. But for both Robert and Kate, it may become the most important gathering of all.As lyrical and true to life as Norris's critically acclaimed debut Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain, which won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards, this is a compelling, emotional story of family, human frailty, and the marks that love leaves on us.

'Shot through with compassion . . . this dreamlike, winding tale is a joy.' A. L. KENNEDY'Moving and unconventionally wise.' Guardian________________________This was how I heard the most important story of my life, the thing that decided me, the story that determined who I was in the end.As snow begins to fall outside, two strangers meet by chance in a bar. She is trying to make sense of a life shaken by heartbreak and ruined dreams. He is on a desperate quest to find something he lost in his youth.From the blustery cliffs of Dover to the confines of a nuclear bunker; from the courtroom witness box to the West End stage, he flits from one life to another, never able to stand still.Extraordinary though his story is, the secret she is keeping is even more surprising, and will take them to a place neither of them - or you - expected.From the bestselling author of FIVE RIVERS MET ON A WOODED PLAIN comes this captivating novel about love, abandonment, and the power of stories to help us find our way in the world.________________________What readers are saying:***** 'I absolutely loved this book - it's beautifully written, very emotional and full of wonderful flights of imagination.'***** 'Unlike anything I've read before.'***** 'A deeply moving account of fragile memory and lost love.'***** 'A completely beautiful book . . . I adored it.'

Wiltshire. 1915.As the shadow of war falls over the Wiltshire landscape, a young couple finds itself caught up in the turmoil of troubled times. For generations, John and Anna’s families have made a living by working the land. Growing up in back-to-back cottages, everyone expects them to marry. Now, however, with nearly half a million young soldiers pouring into the country, the world seems so much bigger than they had ever imagined and the future feels far from certain.Critics Circle and Off West End Award-winning playwright and novelist Barney Norris has been heralded as ‘one of our most exciting young writers’ (Times), ‘a rare and precious talent’ (Evening Standard) ‘a writer of grace and luminosity’ (The Stage) who is ‘fast turning into the quiet voice of Britain’ (British Theatre Guide).

Eddie and Carol were lovers once, but their lives went in different directions. Now they meet again on a park bench in a town full of memories, and find something still burns between them.Critics Circle and Offwestend Award-winning playwright and novelist Barney Norris has been heralded as 'one of our most exciting young writers' (Times), 'a rare and precious talent' (Evening Standard), 'a writer of grace and luminosity' (Stage) who is 'fast turning into the quiet voice of Britain' (British Theatre Guide).

On a farm outside Winchester, Ryan struggles to make a living off the land. His sister Lou has returned home after the death of their father to support Jenny, their formidable mother. Now, when Lou’s boyfriend Pete reappears, flush with money from his job at an oil refinery, Jenny fights to hold her children to the life she planned for them.

The first collection of plays from the multi-award-winning playwright and novelist. Introduction by Alice Hamilton.Visitors: On a farmhouse at the edge of Salisbury Plain, a family is falling apart. Stephen can’t afford to put his mother into care; Arthur can’t afford to stop working and look after his wife. When a young stranger with blue hair moves in to care for Edie as her mind unravels, the family are forced to ask: are we living the way we wanted?Visitors is a haunting, beautiful look at the way our lives slip past us.Eventide: A love song, an elegy, a celebration: Eventide tells the story of three people whose worlds are disappearing. John is a landlord forced to sell up; Liz is a church organist who can't get a gig; Mark takes what work he can just to pay the rent. Their tales unfold round the back of a pub hidden deep in the heart of the Hampshire countryside - a heart that doesn't seem to be beating any more.While We’re Here: Eddie and Carol were lovers once, but their lives went in different directions. Now they meet again on a park bench in a town full of memories, and find something still burns between them.Nightfall: On a farm outside Winchester, Ryan struggles to make a living off the land. His sister Lou has returned home after the death of their father to support Jenny, their formidable mother. Not so long ago, when a neighbour’s Labrador strayed onto the farm, their dad reached for his shotgun. Now, when Lou’s boyfriend Pete reappears, flush with money from his job at an oil refinery, Jenny fights to hold her children to the life she planned for them.