Local Playwright Emma Baim spoke to us about her career and being selected as one of the lucky few for the Women in Theatre Lab.
Leeds born and bred, Emma Baim has been creative for as long as she can remember, developing a love for the arts from an early age. Emma uses her plays as a powerful platform to give voice to stories often left untold, challenging stigmas and celebrating the strength found in openness and honesty.
“Creativity runs in my family’s blood; my dad was a magician and my grandma wrote poetry. She used to come round for Friday night dinner every week and bring us new poems that she was working on and we’d dissect them at the table – I remember always loving that process,” Emma reflects fondly on a childhood surrounded by creativity.
Having acted since she was a toddler, Emma began playwriting as an adult and quickly fell in love with it: “I accidentally found myself setting up a community arts organisation in Leeds – Next Generation Arts – and started writing children’s plays to fill a gap that there was in the community. I also did some teaching at GSAL and wrote a few original plays as there weren’t many that had enough parts for the kids.
“In 2017, I saw an advert for an Arvon playwriting course and was awarded a bursary to spend a week in Shropshire where I wrote a play called brOKen. This was created from my lived experiences and was the first play I’d written for me; it was a story that I needed to tell.”
brOKen details Emma’s experiences of living with Crohn’s Disease from the age of three, and this was the play which got her selected for the Women in Theatre Lab. Founded by Polly Kemp and Jennifer Tuckett, the initiative aims to close the gap between opportunities for men and women in the arts industry: “Given that we’re in 2025, there are still so few doors open for female voices and there are so many more male artistic directors.
“Polly and Jennifer launched the initiative to create a platform for female writers, specifically mid-career emerging artists, which is quite unusual as usually there are lots of opportunities for ages 25 and under but not a lot if you’re well past that!”
Out of over 1,000 applicants, Emma was one of 14 selected to be commissioned to write a new piece which was showcased at London’s Jermyn Street Theatre: “We took part in a series of writing labs with some very successful female playwrights who shared their experiences with us which was really lovely. A lot of the time as a writer, you never get to see your work come to life unless it goes to a big production, so it was amazing to see my work on stage.”
Emma’s commissioned play is called Two Week Wait, which explores the rollercoaster of IVF and the all-consuming nature of the desire to have a family by any means possible, a topic which is close to her heart: “Authenticity is one of the most important things in drama and I tend to be most passionate about telling stories about things that are often difficult to talk about. I think the reason for that is that I spent my life with a secret that was my hidden disability; it’s only when I got older that I realised the power of openness, sharing, and talking.”
Like brOKen, Two Week Wait is based around Emma’s struggles, and she hopes that her work will resonate with people: “My plays aren’t solely my experiences, and I think to create a story we need to share experiences that are bigger than just ourselves.
“Theatre is such a powerful medium and there’s something about the liveness and shared experience that you can’t replicate with film and TV. I’ve fallen in love with writing and creating worlds and stories in a way that I never imagined I would – it’s so exciting to discover a new passion in your 40s!”
