Meet Joey Levenson, our HW Fisher TV drama scholar
BY Katie Smart
2nd Mar 2021
We’re pleased to announce that Joey Levenson has been awarded the HW Fisher Scholarship for TV Screenwriters with Low Income for their TV drama Know the Way. Joey has won a fully funded place on our Writing an Original TV Drama Serial course taught by acclaimed TV-dramatist Colin Teevan.
At CBC we were struck by the confidence and pace of Joey's pilot as well as the authenticity and raw honesty depicted. Know the Way is a contemporary coming-of-age story that explores sexuality, gender, class and relationships. Set in modern-day London, we follow queer 22-year-old Roman navigate the tricky post-graduate time of his life, he struggles to pay rent, moves back home and becomes a 'sugar baby' to make ends meet. We’re thrilled to have Joey on board for our current online course and can’t wait to find out more about the TV drama they're working on . . .
Please could you tell us a bit about yourself and Know the Way – the TV drama you’re working on…
My name is Joey, and I’m a 23-year old writer from London. I’m non-binary (any pronouns) and queer so a lot of my work is informed by that. I’ve recently graduated from King’s College, London and I was the first in my family’s history to attend university. In fact, being a first generation graduate and born-and-bred Londoner also informs a lot of my work and what stories I pull from.
My TV drama that I’m working on, Know the Way is essentially a class drama: it’s about a young person finding their way through life after leaving university and having no money. It’s about inheriting unprocessed familial trauma from years of working class repression and dreams of class mobility. The lead character, Roman, falls in to a journey of sex work to survive post-graduate life, but all the while the sudden tide of change in adulthood overwhelms them. Know the Way is thus a mosaic piece. It’s based off the lives of many people I know, and in that sense it pulls together many fragmented elements in to one singular thing. The lead character grapples with a fluctuating gender identity and fluidity, and tries to separate the conflation of sexuality with gender as their life begins to increasingly spiral out of control. Supporting him is an array of colourful and diverse characters who each have their own stories to tell, both effected by and influencing Roman.
What does winning this scholarship place mean to you?
Winning the scholarship means everything to me. As my financial situation has prevented me from undertaking unpaid or minimum wage jobs that television production placements often have, I am ecstatic that Curtis Brown Creative have given me the chance to shine without monetary limitation. It feels amazing to know that my hard work pays off, and that I was recognised on the virtue of my writing ability, not how well I could support myself going forward. My whole family is so proud of me. They’ve sacrificed a lot to allow me to achieve what I have, and Curtis Brown Creative / HW Fisher are now continuing to facilitate this amazing journey of mine that at many times I thought was not possible.
The CBC team are hugely grateful to HW Fisher for their ongoing support of our courses through scholarships. HW Fisher are a top London chartered accountancy firm, their sponsorship of CBC started when Andrew Subramanium, a partner in HW Fisher’s media group, working with an impressive list of writers, musicians and artists, got talking to CBC’s MD Anna Davis. That first conversation, back in 2016, quickly led to the development of a scholarship programme that has funded two students per year ever since. After the success of their long-standing sponsorship of our Writing Your Novel courses HW Fisher now support scholars on our Writing an Original TV Drama Serial course, Joey is the second scholar to benefit from this sponsorship.
If you’re interested in free writing opportunities and want to study with us, check out The Breakthrough Writers’ Programme. This is our exciting programme of courses, mentoring and scholarships for under-represented writers, funded by Curtis Brown Literary Agency and partners.