Spotlight On... Supported Artist: Josh Overton

"It’s very rare," says Josh Overton, "to be a playwright where the theatre comes to you. Where they tell you that they have the facilities, the equipment, the expertise and what they need is a script to work on. Usually it’s the other way round." Josh is talking in advance of a rehearsed reading of his play This Damp Won’t Burn at Hull Truck’s Grow Festival. 

The play is a musical love story set against the backdrop of Hull’s famous – sometimes infamous – New Adelphi Club at 89 De Grey Street, a place which conjures great memories for former clubbers despite being described by a friend of mine as very hot and sweaty, dark, smoky - and back in the 90s at least not entirely hygienic!

It’s a place that means a lot to Josh, who has spent a lot of time there in the past few years. His first show, a punk rap musical called Angry, was staged there in 2015, and then a few years ago he applied successfully to the Writers’ Guild New Play Commission Scheme for This Damp Won’t Burn.

The challenge was how he could write something that would excite both himself and Hull Truck. It was around the time of The Adelphi’s 40^th anniversary and Josh was intrigued by the idea of trying to recreate the thrill and exhilaration of the club’s atmosphere for the stage. A reading of an earlier version was held at The Adelphi last year.

A workshop session with Hull Truck followed. Josh already had a relationship with them through Youth Theatre and a play written for the Act III group in 2025, To Infirmity and Beyond. He admits that the early draft was "a bit of a mess" but feels that the support and guidance from the theatre was "real magic."

"Hull Truck are the most proactive theatre group I have come across in my career," he says. "That means the world to me." He speaks highly of Hull Truck’s dedication to developing emerging artists and their belief that this is the only way to ensure a continuing supply of talent for the theatre. 

From his own experience he knows that such an approach works wonders for self belief, confidence and motivation. And it’s paying off.

From small beginnings Josh has won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, has other exciting projects in the pipeline including commissions abroad and has even written the words for an opera which is being staged at Buxton Opera House from 13^th to 25^th July. The word he keeps coming back to is ‘open’ saying how approachable and open Hull Truck are, and how it’s rare to work on a show with so much support. 

Further intensive work on the play (textual analysis, looking for weaknesses) is taking place prior to the rehearsed reading for the Grow Festival. "Can we get some magic?" he asks. The idea of looking for magic crops up frequently in his conversation.

I asked what advice he would have for an aspiring writer and then found an answer in something Josh had previously written. “Never doubt yourself or think you're not experienced enough to write a play!  No one knows entirely what they’re doing, not really. There are genius writers who write with excellent formulas and structures that make the process easier, but at the end of the day when they sit down to fill out those pages they still have to rely on their imagination, their creativity and their passion for a subject, which puts them at exactly the same level as a beginner. Trust your imagination and you're halfway to being a professional. Believe in yourself and you're already miles ahead of most writers.” 

It’s clearly working for Josh!

New work at Hull Truck Theatre is supported by The Foyle Foundation and the Mike Bradwell New Work Fund. Donate today by calling the Box Office on 01482 323638 or online here: Mike Bradwell New Work Fund | HullTruckTheatre