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Garry is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and producer. He has written for the National Theatre, leading theatres and venues across the UK, and extensively for television and radio. His television work has been seen in more than 60 countries.

From 2005 to 2020, he was director of the masters programme in writing for performance at the University of Leeds. In 2023 he won a Writers Guild of Great Britain New Play Commission Scheme award to write a play for Sunderland Culture.

News - November 17 2024

Garry can now be reached on Blue Sky - @garrylyons.bsky.social - as well as on Twitter-X, Facebook and LinkedIn

News - January 11 2024

Garry will be introducing his new play ON THE RAVE to a meeting of Venues North at Live Theatre, Newcastle on January 18. Venues North is a network from across the north of England supporting new theatre in the region. ON THE RAVE is a vibrant dance-theatre piece about the North-East rave scene, commissioned under the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain New Play Commission Scheme.

Recent work

  • Blow Down

    In the pandemic-hit early months of 2021, Garry researched and wrote a new stage play to mark the demolition of the iconic cooling towers at Ferrybridge Power Station near his home in Yorkshire. An online reading was presented by Theatre Royal Wakefield, and a full production directed by Tess Seddon opened to packed houses at Leeds Playhouse in February 2023 before touring.

    (Video: Madaan Media. Aerial Photo: Yan Lawrence)

  • Lupa

    In 2022, Garry made a new departure into fantasy prose fiction for Young Adults. Lupa is a time-travel story about a mountain rescue dog who gets lost in a mist near Hadrian’s Wall during a training exercise, and finds herself outside a Roman fort in the 2nd century AD. The story was commissioned for the Hadrian’s Wall 1900 centenary event, and showcased at the Hexham Book Festival in June 2022. Press the button below to find it.

  • The Last Seam

    Based on stories collected from the local community, this acclaimed piece of documentary theatre marked the closure of Hatfield Main colliery, one of the UK’s last remaining deep seam mines. Produced by Cast in Doncaster, it toured Yorkshire and the North-East in 2018. Heritage Doncaster is assembling an archive of Garry’s research interviews for the project.

    (Video: John Fuller)