Draft:Nia Hopkin Williams

• Comment: See WP:BLP. Statements need to be sourced or removed. Here, the entire background section is unsourced. Greenman (talk) 07:41, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

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Nia Hopkin Williams is a Welsh writer, musician and animator. She founded theatre production group Three Chairs and a Hat, and has written and produced stage musicals, digital drama and animated musicals, several of which have received streaming awards. Williams has written eight novels, and her short stories have been published in a number of anthologies and magazines, translated into Czech, and broadcast on BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 4 Extra and BBC Radio Wales. She also works as an accompanist and répétiteur, and is an Associate Artist with English National Ballet.

Background

Nia Williams was born and grew up in Cardiff, South Wales, the third child of BBC broadcaster Alun Williams and poet and philosophy tutor Perrie (née Morris, daughter of Rhys Hopkin Morris and Gwladys Perrie Williams). <ref>https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1659286/</ref> She was brought up bilingually and attended Welsh-language state comprehensive school Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen. During her school years she studied piano privately <ref>Vetta, S (2015) 'I love You All.' Oxford, Phillip Hind</ref>. Williams attended the University of Exeter , where she received a First Class Honours degree in History and the Dean's Award for 1983 <ref>https://www.linkedin.com/in/nia-williams-2bab9b32/?originalSubdomain=uk</ref>,. After a year's training at the NCTJ School of Journalism in Darlington, she went on to work in print and radio journalism and became a self-employed freelance in 1987 <ref>Vetta, S (2015) 'I love You All.' Oxford, Phillip Hind</ref>. During the 1990s she worked in publishing as a writer and editor, produced radio features for BBC World Service 'Business Matters' and LBC 'Family Money', and continued to develop her music career by accompanying singers, choirs and theatre groups <ref>https://www.serenbooks.com/seren-author/nia-williams/</ref>. She also studied part-time at Reading University, where she was awarded an MA in European Studies in 1991 <ref>https://www.linkedin.com/in/nia-williams-2bab9b32/?originalSubdomain=uk</ref>.

Writing career

Williams' short story 'Another View' was shortlisted for the 1995 Rhys Davies Award, published in Parthian Books' anthology Tilting at Windmills., and broadcast on BBC Radio 4,. Her short fiction was subsequently published in a number of anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio TABLE, and one story, The Word, was translated into Czech. In 2009 Williams' story Bryn Hyfryd was published in The Raconteur magazine as part of the Equality and Human Rights Commission in Wales' Human Writes project, marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Williams' first novel, The Pierglass, was published by Honno Modern Fiction in 2001. Her second novel, Persons Living or Dead, also published by Honno, was shortlisted for the 2006 Wales Book of the Year. The Colour of Grass, her third novel, was published by Seren in 2011. There followed five more, published by Williams via Kindle Direct Publishing and Draft 2 Digital, under the imprint Gurning Gnome®: Birdcage (2013), Hidden Gems (2014), Breakage (2017) Touched (2020) and Vera Venti (2021).

In 2011 Williams was invited to take part in the Royal Opera's ROH2 programme in association with OperaGenesis, and the resulting short collaborative piece Roger and Henry, with composer Elizabeth Winters, was performed as part of the Exposure event at the Linbury Studio Theatre in the Royal Opera House in London.

Williams wrote the libretto for composer Malcolm Pearce's choral piece Terpsichoreana (Five Dance Scenes), premiered by Oxford Pro Musica Singers in 2016 and performed again at St Paul's Church, Covent Garden by the City Chamber Choir and Chameleon Brass Band in 2017.

Williams', 90-minute verse libretto Smoke and Mirrors, linking songs by Kurt Weill, was performed by mezzo-soprano Rebecca Allison (with Williams accompanying) at the Old Fire Station Theatre in Oxford and again in Kennington Centre in 2015.

Musical career

In 2011 Nia Williams and Andy Milburn co-wrote stage musical Love Online, which was performed Quince Players in Sunninghill, Ascot; Starburst Theatre Company in Farnborough, Surrey, and The Sainsbury Singers at Leighton Park Theatre, Reading.

Williams went on to write and compose a number of stage musicals as sole author.

Daddy's Girls was performed in Oxford's Burton-Taylor Studio Theatre in 2011 and Old Fire Station Theatre in 2012.

In 2014 Verity made its debut in Oxford's Old FireStation. A video of this production won Best Musical in the streaming platform Scenesaver 'Birthday Awards' of 2022. In 2019, the show ran at the Space on the Mile for the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, produced by Williams' theatre group Three Chairs and a Hat®. It returned to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022, playing on alternate nights with its companion piece, Dexter, at the Space at Symposium Hall. A film of one of these live performances reached the semi-finals of the 2024 Edinburgh Film Festival.

After a private premiere, Williams' two-hander musical, Melody, played at Oxford theatre spaces The Jam Factory and Jericho Tavern, the Unicorn Theatre in Abingdon, and at the Phoenix Theatre, Ross-on-Wye in 2019. Further performances were scheduled for 2020 at London venues The Tea House Theatre and Soho Arts Theatre Club, as well as a short run at the Edinburgh Fringe in the Space on the Mile, but all had to be cancelled as a result of the Covid 19 Pandemic.

As the UK went into lockdown, Williams turned to digital theatre and animation. Her publishing platform Gurning Gnome® hosted 'Gnomefest', a video festival of new writers performing their own work; and Three Chairs and a Hat commissioned director and poet Wayne T Brown to create a series of videos under the title Shakespeare (She/Her), featuring women performing Shakespeare's monologues and sonnets in contemporary contexts). Shakespeare (She/Her) featured in an online international conference, The Equality Shakespeare Festival, hosted by the Shakespeare Institute and the University of Birmingham, in 2022, and was a semi-finalist in the Paris Lady MovieMakers Festival 2024.

Nia Williams herself performed in two video productions: Haunted, an adaptation of her own short story, and Three Stages, which also featured singer Matt Allison, and comprised a selection of works dedicated to his mother and Williams' friend and musical collaborator, Rebecca Allison, who died suddenly of sepsis in 2016.

Several of the videos produced at this time featured in Online Fringe Festivals hosted by The Space, Edinburgh Fringe and Brighton Fringe.

Animated musicals were another new venture for Three Chairs and a Hat during the pandemic. Lady M, a musical originally written for the stage, was animated by Williams and released in three separate episodes and subsequently combined as one. Episode One, Midday Hags, was a semi-finalist in the International Cosmopolitan Film Festival of Tokyo in 2023; Episode Two, Mr King, reached the semi-finals of the 2021 Stockholm Short Festival, and in 2024 the complete version was awarded Best Short Animation in the Paris Lady Moviemakers festival.

The first episode of an animated musical based on the life of Tsar Peter the Great, Homecoming, was released in 2023 and won Best Animation at the 2024 Berlin Women Cinema Festival; the second episode, Trouble, which followed in 2024, was a semi-finalist in the Glasgow Film Awards 2025 and in the Melbourne Independent Film Festival 2025. Further episodes are projected for release in 2025 and 2026.

Post-lockdown, Williams returned to stage musicals with Mrs Pack, a period piece based on a real 17th-century character, which made its debut at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe and was revived at the Etcetera Theatre for the 2024 Camden Fringe. Both productions were directed by Katie Blackwell.

Contemporary dance company Lunas Dance commissioned Williams' instrumental/vocal piece 'Time Is, Time Was, Time Will Be', which was performed as at the Old Fire Station, Oxford, with Williams as musical director and pianist.

Williams composed the music for Philip Hind's documentary film 'The Ultimate Survivor' (2011), marking the centenary of the Ultimate Picture Palace, one of the UK's oldest purpose-built cinemas.

Williams continues her work as a pianist, musical director and workshop-leader alongside her writing, composition and animation. She works on English National Ballet's engagement programme as an associate musician and is the resident musical director for workshop company MuMo Creative. Her work as accompanist/musical director has included several productions for touring opera company Opera Anywhere and the Musical Youth Company of Oxford, and she has led workshops and rehearsals at the Royal Academy of Music, The New Theatre, Oxford, Oxford Playhouse, Oxford Opera Company, Oxford School of Drama, Pauline Quirke Academy and English Touring Opera, as well as accompanying masterclasses and concerts for Oxford Lieder Festival, Cheltenham Festival of Performing Arts and Oxford Music Festival