Philip Osment read Modern Languages at Keble College, Oxford and trained as an actor at Webber Douglas. He acted with leading alternative theatre companies including The Half Moon, Shared Experience and Gay Sweatshop (who performed his first scripts) and then went on to work as a director and writer.
He has also written and directed plays for young people for Theatre Centre and Red Ladder.
His trilogy of Devon plays (THE DEARLY BELOVED, WHAT I DID IN THE HOLIDAYS and FLESH AND BLOOD) was commissioned by Mike Alfreds and produced by Cambridge Theatre Company (aka Method and Madness). These were all nominated for Writers Guild awards and THE DEARLY BELOVED won the award for best regional play in 1993. In 1999 Mike Alfreds commissioned BURIED ALIVE which played the southwest before coming in to Hampstead Theatre. In 2000 LITTLE VIOLET AND THE ANGEL was the co-winner of the Peggy Ramsey Award; WISE GUYS was performed as the inaugural production at the new Contact Theatre and was nominated for TMA and Manchester Evening News Best Play awards.

What happens when you're in a hole? What happens when that hole's inside you? What do you do you fill it with to make yourself feel whole?
Last year, 3 teenagers emailed the 20 Stories High Theatre Company to ask them if they could make a play about their friend Holly. This is how it unravelled...
3 teenagers: ...So that's our story and we really want to tell it... and we want to act in it as well, and play ourselves... cos actors wouldn't really be as convincing as us...
20 Stories High: It's a very moving story... but we're really busy at the moment and also, to be honest, you're not really actors.
3 teenagers: But we really want to tell our story... it says on your website that "Everybody has a story to tell... and their own way of telling it..."
20 Stories High: ...well, come back in a year, when we're less busy, and let's talk...
One Year Later... We made the play with them... WHOLE
Winner of the Writers' Guild Award for Theatre Play for Young People 2013.