James Ley

James Ley is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter living in Glasgow. A Screen International Rising Star Scotland 2026, he is an alumnus of BBC Writers, Scripted and EIFF Talent Lab. His work includes his Fringe First award-winning hit stage play Ode to Joy, Wilf for the Traverse Theatre and Love Song to Lavender Menace for Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh. James is a recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award for Playwriting and a Peter Shaffer Commission from the National Theatre Studio. He was recently a writer on attachment to the National Theatre Studio. He is currently under commission to the National Theatre Studio, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Tron Theatre, Pearlfisher Theatre and The Royal Lyceum Theatre. He is adapting two of his stage plays into feature films with the support of Screen Scotland. Ode to Joy will be his debut feature as writer/director. His debut short film Sleazy Tiger premiered at Palm Springs International Film Festival (2025) and was nominated for Best of British in the Iris Prize. He will shoot his next funded short as writer/director, A Boy’s Best Friend, in January 2027, with the support of Take Three/Screen Scotland/The BFI Network. His short film Bed to the Future for NTS and BBC Scotland was a BBC television commission and will air on the iPlayer in January 2027.