Two BBC-Linked Liverpool Comedy Writing Schemes Close in November – One Needs a Production Company, One Needs Ten Pages

Ten pages. That’s the entire barrier to entry on the Royal Court’s Stage Write Comedy Special. Sit with that for a second, because the other BBC-backed Liverpool comedy writing opportunity closing this month wants a production company with a proven television comedy track record before it will read a word you’ve written.

Two schemes, two weeks apart, and almost nothing in common beyond the BBC logo and the city. The BBC Comedy Liverpool Script Development project closes on Monday 9 November, and per Televisual it will pick five projects for development. The Royal Court’s round, which Good News Liverpool and Chortle both reported on 2 November, closes on 23 November. It asks for a form and a writing sample. If you haven’t got an agent or a prodco on side, the theatre’s round is the only one of the two you can actually enter, which is a funny state of affairs given whose logo sits on the other one.

What do you actually have to send to Stage Write?

An application form and a 10-page sample of comedy writing. That’s it, according to Good News Liverpool’s write-up. “Applicants must complete an application form and submit a 10-page sample of comedy writing.” No commission, no development slate, no industry reference. Chortle describes Stage Write as “the theatre’s free nine-month playwriting course”, and gives the deadline as November 23. Participants on the 2027 course are expected to produce a comedy play by the end of it. So there’s a script due at the end of it.

That’s why I’m attributing the programme detail to Good News Liverpool and Chortle rather than claiming I read the application page myself. The ask is an application form plus a 10-page sample of comedy writing. And be careful what else you click. The only live date is 23 November.

Bolger put the venue’s angle plainly in the Good News Liverpool piece:

Most of the shows we produce are comedies and so it’s such a great opportunity and an honour to work with BBC Comedy

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Which is true, and also the reason this particular theatre running a comedy-specific round makes more sense than most. Good News Liverpool reports that more than 140 writers have taken part in the Royal Court’s playwright development programme to date. The comedy focus, it says, “forms part of the legacy of the 2026 BBC Comedy Festival, which the venue hosted in spring.” Festival legacy funding usually means a tote bag and a networking mixer with warm white wine, and this one appears to run to nine months of course time instead.

The 9 November scheme has a gate the other one doesn’t

Here is the sentence from Chortle’s September report on the BBC Comedy Liverpool Script Development project that decides who can and can’t apply: projects “must be submitted through a UK-based production company with a proven track record in television comedy.” Chortle also reports that writers “must be originally from, or currently based in, the Liverpool city region”, and that the BBC wants “original, accessible, 30-minute comedy concepts”.

Televisual gave the submission deadline as Monday 9 November, and reported that “Five projects will be selected for development, with at least one receiving additional tailored support.” That extra support, in Televisual’s words, “could include the commissioning of a second script, a table read, or the production of a taster tape or short film.” Emma Lawson, Interim Director of BBC Comedy, told Televisual that “Liverpool has long been home to some of the UK’s most distinctive comedy voices.”

I don’t think the production company requirement is bad faith – a broadcaster commissioning development money has to pay somebody who can deliver a script, and that somebody is contractually a prodco. But it does mean the scheme reads as a hunt for talent while functioning as a hunt for talent that has already been found by someone with a company number. The writer-performer doing twelve minutes in a back room in Birkenhead on a Tuesday has no route into it this month, though she can walk into the Royal Court’s with a form and ten pages and nobody else’s letterhead.

What a free entry route is worth when the average comic turned over £21,143

Because the money has gone. The Live Comedy Association’s 2026 survey, covered by Chortle in February, found that “17 per cent now earn nothing from comedy at all, up from 7 per cent last year”, and that “The average annual turnover for individual comedians has dropped to £21,143, down from £26,778 just a year ago”. Against that, a registration fee of any size is a filter on who can afford to be considered, which is partly why Stage Write being free matters more than it would have done three years ago.

No source gives a number of places on the 2027 cohort, and nothing I’ve seen says the course pays a fee or a bursary. Free to enter and free to attend is not the same as paid work, and anyone budgeting nine months around it should be clear-eyed about that. What it buys is a place on a free nine-month playwriting course, as Chortle describes it, which expects writers on the 2027 intake to produce a comedy play, at a theatre whose output, by Bolger’s account, is mostly comedies, plus a connection to BBC Comedy, which Bolger called an honour to work with on this first Comedy Special. Of the two Liverpool routes announced for this autumn, it’s the one that doesn’t ask you for a company number first.

Most of the rest of the development ladder now runs through someone else’s slate.

What to do between now and 23 November

If you haven’t, the honest answer is that the BBC Comedy Liverpool scheme isn’t an application you can make this month, so close that tab and open the one with the Stage Write form on it.

Ten pages of comedy writing is a weekend if you’ve got drafts sitting in a folder, which most people reading this do. Pick the ten pages where somebody laughs on the page rather than the ten pages that explain the premise best – a reader at a producing theatre has read a thousand premises and very few jokes. Use the form.

The thing I’d quite like to know, and which nobody has published, is how many of those 140-plus Stage Write alumni ended up with a play on at the Royal Court rather than a certificate. If you’re one of them, I’d genuinely like to hear what the nine months was like – particularly whether anyone from the BBC ever actually turned up.

Quick answers

When is the Stage Write Comedy Special deadline? 23 November 2026, per both Good News Liverpool and Chortle.

Does Stage Write cost anything? No. Good News Liverpool and Chortle both describe it as free, and Chortle specifies a free nine-month course.

Can I apply to the BBC Comedy Liverpool scheme on my own? No. Chortle reports projects must be submitted through a UK-based production company with a proven track record in television comedy, and Televisual gives the submission deadline as Monday 9 November.