Gregory Burke

Gregory Burke was born in Dunfermline in 1968 and currently lives in Edinburgh.

His plays include Gagarin Way which was commissioned by the Traverse Theatre in association with the National Theatre Studio. It opened at the Traverse Theatre in August 2001 – winning a Fringe First, a Herald Angel and the First of the Firsts Award – before transferring to the National Theatre’s Cottesloe. The play won Gregory the Critics’ Circle Most Promising Playwright Award and the Best New Play Award at the TMA Barclays Awards. He was also joint winner of the Meyer-Whitworth Award. The play was also nominated for the South Bank Show Theatre Award and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play.

Gregory’s other plays include The Straits (Paines Plough, UK tour); On Tour (Royal Court Theatre/Liverpool Everyman); Liar (National Theatre Shell Connections); Black Watch (National theatre of Scotland, world tour); Hoors (Traverse Theatre, Theatre Royal, Bath). Black Watch won Gregory the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and was awarded Best Foreign Play by the New York Drama Critics’ Circle in 2009. It also won the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Play and the South Bank Show Theatre Award in 2007.

Gregory has also adapted Gagarin Way and Black Watch for BBC Radio as well as writing original plays for radio, Occy Eyes and Shellshocked. Gregory has also written a TV drama, One Night In Emergency for Silver River and BBC Scotland which will be broadcast in January 2010.