--- description: Polly Stenham had her first theatrical success at 19—but she didn't stop there title: A Teenaged Playwright Grows Up image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta2b2d04d119d2a8a/698895640a4a22ebd79c9daa/next-generation-leader-polly-stenham-160613135397.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Jun 03, 2016 # A Teenaged Playwright Grows Up Polly Stenham, United Kingdom by [Tara John](/author/tara-john/) ## Tara John Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close  Next Generation Leader, Polly Stenham, Playwright.Photographed in London, UK May 20, 2016 Next Generation Leader, Polly Stenham, Playwright.Photographed in London, UK May 20, 2016Jim Naughten for TIME At the age of 19, Polly Stenham was catapulted to fame when her play _That Face_—the first thing she ever wrote, she says, other than “terrible poetry”—was discovered in a writing workshop and produced by London’s Royal Court Theatre to widespread acclaim. _That Face_ moved to London’s West End and eventually to New York in 2010, winning Stenham a Critics’ Circle Award and three Olivier nominations at a time when her peers were still in college. Ten years on, Stenham has produced a body of work that is the envy of playwrights twice her age, with three more London shows. “Starting young made me fearless,” the 29-year-old says. “You don’t know how many ways in which you can fail.” **Read More:** [This 15-Year-Old Girl Could Be the Best Rock Climber Ever](http://time.com/4352618/ashima-shiraishi-next-generation-leaders/ "undefined") Her plays grapple with mental health, family dysfunction and middle-class privilege, leading some to call her the voice of a particular kind of generation—the young and well-off, now forced to confront their lives of monied entitlement. Her own upbringing, as the daughter of a wealthy Unilever director and an artist mother who suffered with mental illness, gave Stenham very personal insight. “At what point are you accountable for your actions, and at what point are you the helpless sum of your past?” she asks. She has plenty of fans—_Girls_ creator Lena Dunham among them—but Stenham is self-effacing about her achievements. She also shows no sign of slowing down. She helped write Nicolas Winding Refn’s new psychothriller, _The Neon Demon,_ a hit at Cannes this year, and is working on an adaptation of _The Odyssey_ for Britain’s National Theatre—an epic, but one that embraces her themes of loss and homecoming. If Stenham has learned anything from the past decade, it’s to embrace her self-doubt and use it to strengthen her resolve: “I think by just working through it, I try to overcome it.” Polly Stenham: A Teenaged Playwright Grows Up ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/next-generation-leaders/4352603/polly-stenham-next-generation-leaders/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/next-generation-leaders/4352603/polly-stenham-next-generation-leaders/"},"headline":"A Teenaged Playwright Grows Up","datePublished":"2016-06-03T16:54:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-02T23:14:36.136Z","description":"Polly Stenham had her first theatrical success at 19—but she didn't stop there","url":"https://time.com/collections/next-generation-leaders/4352603/polly-stenham-next-generation-leaders/","keywords":["Theater","United Kingdom","NGL Articles topic"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta2b2d04d119d2a8a/698895640a4a22ebd79c9daa/next-generation-leader-polly-stenham-160613135397.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tara John","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/tara-john/"}],"creator":"Tara John","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta2b2d04d119d2a8a/698895640a4a22ebd79c9daa/next-generation-leader-polly-stenham-160613135397.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/next-generation-leaders/4352603/polly-stenham-next-generation-leaders/","name":"A Teenaged Playwright Grows Up"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Challenges are Just Part of Making it to the Top","description":"The 2016 Next Generation Leaders on how they overcome obstacles in their careers.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/IVCKOb5s/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2016-06-03T18:07:52.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/IVCKOb5s.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collections/next-generation-leaders/4352603/polly-stenham-next-generation-leaders/","duration":"PT2M2S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collections/next-generation-leaders/4352603/polly-stenham-next-generation-leaders/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```