Alex Medland
Alex Medland is an actor and award-winning playwright from Aotearoa/New Zealand, now based in Edinburgh.
Her last play We’re Gonna Kill Billy was recently read at The Royal Court Theatre’s Open Submission Festival. We’re Gonna Kill Billy also won The 2025 Adam New Zealand Play Award for Best Play, Best Play by a Māori Playwright and Best Play by a Woman. Alex is currently the youngest recipient of the Adam Award in its eighteen year history. In the UK, We’re Gonna Kill Billy was shortlisted for The Women’s Prize for Playwriting and The Alpine Prize, and long-listed for The Bruntwood Prize.
Alex’s first play Becoming Jeff Bezos won Playmarket New Zealand’s 2024 b425 Award and was recently read as part of Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival’s He Kākano readings. She is one of the founding members of Half Trick Theatre, a kiwi theatre company based in Edinburgh dedicated to making irreverent reinventions of untouchable classics. This is Alex’s first professional commission, and she’s beyond excited to work with Wonderfools.
Bea Webster
Bea trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (BA performance in British Sign Language and English)
Recent Writing Credits include: Staging Our Futures Project (Little Cog Theatre), Squeezy Yoghurt (National Theatre of Scotland’s Scenes for Survival)
Bea’s poem, Long Lost Lover, about Thailand, her birthplace, was published in both BSL and English. She also wrote and performed in the BBC Social’s How Not To Be D*cks To Deaf People. She is one of the Playwright Studio Scotland’s mentored playwrights for 2020.
She was nominated Best Actress in a Play at The Stage Debut Awards 2019 for her role of Kattrin in Mother Courage. Theatre credits include: The Winter’s Tale (Royal Shakespeare Company), Peeling (Taking Flight Theatre Company), Mother Courage and Her Children (Red Ladder Theatre Company).
Bryony Kimmings
Bryony Kimmings is a playwright, performer, documentary maker and screen writer from the UK. She is inspired by female stories, social taboos and dismantling power structures. Kimmings’ work is brutally honest, very funny and often a bit geeky and dangerous.
Bryony’s stage work includes her plays (as writer and performer): Sex Idiot, 7 Day Drunk, Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model, Fake It til’ You Make It and I’m a Phoenix, Bitch.
Her TV and film work includes the documentaries The Sex Clinic (C4) and Opera Mums (BBC) and the feature film Last Christmas, which Bryony cowrote with Emma Thompson.
Bryony is working class and loud mouthed; a deep thinker, world fixer, activist and troublemaker all wrapped into one. She likes adapting and reimagining books, creating 3D female characters. She enjoys writing about class, gender and disability. Having toured all over the world with her shows (created about real events in her life) from the National Theatre to the Sydney Opera House, Bryony is now focusing on writing for film and TV.
“Kimmings is an artist of exceptional integrity, compassion, imagination and guts.” The Guardian
“Bold, brave and very brilliant!” The Independent
“An unabashedly wacky sweetheart” The Times
“Hilarious, heart-breaking, troubling and inspirational. Kick-ass in all the right ways.” Time Out
Chris Thorpe
Chris is a writer and performer from Manchester. He is currently working with China Plate touring his solo piece Status internationally and developing the final show in his trilogy in collaboration with Rachel Chavkin. He is Associate Artist at the Royal Exchange, Manchester – work for them includes There Has Possibly Been An Incident and The Mysteries, and work with their community projects and Young Company. Other theatre work includes Victory Condition and The Milk of Human Kindness for the Royal Court, as well as an upcoming Royal Court/Methuen commission focusing on the climate crisis and the Royal Court/FT film What Do You Want Me To Say?, and several shows for the Unicorn Theatre including a new version of Beowulf.
He has on-going collaborations with Rachel Chavkin (Confirmation/Status/A Family Business), Lucy Ellinson (TORYCORE), Portugal’s mala voadora (Overdrama/House-Garden/Dead End/Your Best Guess, and in development Dying for the National Theatre of Portugal), Hannah Jane Walker (The Oh Fuck Moment/I Wish I Was Lonely) and Rachel Bagshaw, writing The Shape of the Pain in 2017 and adapting it for the BBC’s Culture in Quarantine in 2020. Chris was a founder member of Unlimited Theatre and is an Associate of Live Art/Theatre company Third Angel with whom he co-wrote and toured Presumption and What I Heard About The World globally. Other regular collaborators include Yusra Warsama, Javaad Alipoor and Nassim Soleimanpour. Recent work also includes We Are The King Of Ventilators directed by Tim Etchells and performed by Jim Fletcher for the Onassis Foundation New York. He is currently working with Melanie Wilson on her upcoming Artificial Intelligence Project for Fuel Theatre.
Chris’s work tours internationally and is also regularly produced for stage and radio throughout Europe and in the US, including Victory Condition at Residenzteater Munich, and the Italian productions of There Has Possibly Been an Incident and Confirmation were awarded the Premio Franco Enriquez 2018. His work has won multiple Fringe First awards. Chris was the Arvon mentor for playwriting, 2016/17 and works with the National Student Drama Festival.
Debris Stevenson
Dyslexic academic, Grime-poet and Dancehall raving social activist. Debris explores the intersectional, unexpected and unjust – ideally whilst making you laugh and/or dance.
Debris has worked in 30 countries, raised over £300,000 with her company The Mouthy Poets to develop young talent, designed foundation performance poetry modules at Nottingham University and had her debut poetry pamphlet, Pigeon Party, published by Flipped Eye.
Debris’ debut show, Poet in da Corner, premiered at The Royal Court in 2018, receiving 4-5 stars and seeing Debris nominated for an Emerging Talent of The Year Award (Evening Standard Theatre Awards). Poet in da Corner toured the UK early 2020 alongside the release of the album (Accidental Records).
Debris is currently developing several TV shows, a play for Hightide Theatre and The Write to Rave, an immersive play exploring raving as radicalism. When Debris’ not writing she can be found dancing for The Heatwave, Red Bull Music Academy and Sillis Movement.
Douglas Maxwell
Douglas Maxwell has been one of Scotland’s top playwrights since his debut in 2000. His work includes I Can Go Anywhere at The Traverse, Edinburgh, Charlie Sonata at The Royal Lyceum Edinburgh, The Whip Hand for The Traverse/Birmingham Rep, Yer Granny (a version of Roberto Cossa’s La Nona) for the National Theatre of Scotland and Fever Dream: Southside for The Citizens, Glasgow.
His online lockdown work includes Beautiful Boy for Pitlochry Festival Theatre, The Assumption for Solar Bear/Royal Conservatoire Scotland and Fatbaws for the National Theatre of Scotland/BBC. Fatbaws, directed by and starring Peter Mullan, has been seen by a million people and was subsequently screened on BBC Scotland and iPlayer.
His many other plays include Decky Does a Bronco, Mancub, Promises Promises (staged in New York as The Promise) and A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity.
His plays have been performed in translation in Germany, Norway, Hong Kong, New York, Chicago, Holland, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Wales, Japan, France, Belgium and South Korea, where his debut play Our Bad Magnet ran for over ten years.
His plays are published by Oberon books. His first collection of work focuses on his writing for younger audiences. As well as Decky Does a Bronco and Mancub that volume also contains Too Fast, The Mother Ship and Helmet.
His upcoming work includes the musical Orphans, written with Roddy Hart and Tommy Riley for the National Theatre of Scotland, which is set to open in The SECC Armadillo in Spring 2022.
Douglas lives on the Southside of Glasgow with his wife and two daughters.
Ella Hickson
Ella Hickson is an award-winning playwright whose work has been performed throughout the UK and internationally. Ella’s theatre credits include ‘Adult Children’ (2021) a VR piece for the Donmar co-created with Sacha Wares in association with ETT, Scanlab Projects and Trial and Error Studios, ‘Swive’ (2019) at The Globe, ‘Anna’ (2019) at the National Theatre, ‘The Writer’ (2018) and ‘Oil’ (2016) at The Almeida Theatre, and ‘Wendy and Peter Pan’ (2015) at The Royal Shakespeare Company. She is a member of the Royal Society of Literature, a Thornton Wilder Fellow, and a MacDowell Colony Fellow, as well as a recipient of The Catherine Johnson Award. Ella is an Associate Artist of The Old Vic.
Ellen Bannerman
Ellen trained as an actor at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. (BA, Acting.) She recently took part in the Traverse Young Writers group, which was led by Poet and Playwright Hannah Lavery. She is delighted to debut her first play as part of Positive Stories for Negative Times. Since leaving drama school Ellen has made her theatre debut in Rebus: Long Shadows by Rona Munro and Ian Rankin, and recently played the role of Sophie in Season two of Netflix’s: The Alienist.
Greg McHugh
Greg McHugh is an award winning writer and actor who is most recently known for ‘Only Child’ (BBC1) where he stars alongside Gregor Fisher (Rab C Nesbitt, Love Actually) Greg is widely known for his portrayal as the dressing robed odd ball ‘Howard’ in channel 4’s hit comedy Fresh Meat. Greg’s other numerous TV credits include: Shetland, Guilt, The A Word, A Discovery of Witches, Marvellous, and Gary: Tank Commander, the Scottish BAFTA-winning show that he also wrote and created.
Greg has also appeared in entertainment shows including: Richard Osmond’s House of Games, Celebrity Mastermind and Ross Kemps Bridge of Lies.
Hannah Lavery
Hannah is a poet, playwright, performer and director. Her poetry has been published widely and her poem, Scotland, you’re no mine, was selected by Roseanne Watt as one of the Best Scottish Poems 2019.
The Drift, her autobiographical play, toured Scotland as part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Season 2019.
In 2020, she was awarded a New Playwrights’ Award by the Playwrights Studio Scotland and selected by Owen Sheers’ as one of his Ten Writers Asking Questions That Will Shape Our Future for the International Literature Showcase, a project from the National Writing Centre and the British Council. She was also selected as one of the Scottish Voices for the BBC Writers’ Room.
In November 2020, her highly acclaimed play Lament for Sheku Bayoh was directed by Hannah in a co-production with the Royal Lyceum Theatre, National Theatre of Scotland and Edinburgh International Festival.
Hannah is one of Imaginate’s Accelerator Artists and an Associate Artist with the National Theatre of Scotland as well as Writer in Residence at Lyceum Youth Theatre.
She was recently selected for the Adopt a Playwright Award by offwestend.com and is under commission by Pitlochry Festival Theatre to adapt Jekyll and Hyde for their upcoming Summer Season 2021.
Hannah is an experienced workshop facilitator and mentor and received the Creative Edinburgh Leadership Award in 2020, for her work with the Writers of Colour Writing Group and for curating and directing a film poetry series for Fringe of Colour.
Hannah Low (Young Writer Commission)
Hannah is a Chinese-Scottish writer, actor and youth theatre practitioner based in Edinburgh Scotland who graduated in 2019 with a First Class BA(Hons) degree in Musical Theatre. Most recently, Hannah was selected as a mentee for Playwright’s Studio Scotland’s 2024 programme, working with Douglas Maxwell to develop a new play. Hannah makes vibrant, narrative-led, interdisciplinary work for stage. Her projects are currently supported by Vanishing Point and Imaginate, and funded by Creative Scotland and the Edinburgh City Council Diversity and Inclusion fund.
Since graduating, Hannah has been part of Traverse Theatre’s Creating Spaces and Young Writers programmes and is a recipient of Vanishing Points ‘Everyone is Creative’ grant. She was also selected for Framework Theatre’s Home: A Project for New Writers. As part of these programmes she has learnt from artists Shilpa T-Hyland, Mariam Omari, Hannah Lavery and Raman Mundair. Hannah is beyond delighted to be working with Wonder Fools and writing her first ever professionally commissioned play.
James Ley
James Ley is an award winning writer living in Glasgow. He wrote and directed Ode to Joy (How Gordon got to go to the nasty pig party) winner of a Scotsman Fringe First in 2022 and nominated for a CATS Award 2023 (Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland) for Best New Play. James was co-writer with Damian Barr on Maggie & Me (National Theatre of Scotland). His other plays include Wilf (Traverse Theatre) and Love Song to Lavender Menace (Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, Summerhall, SoHo Playhouse, New York). James is under commission to Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh and Wonder Fools. A BBC Writersroom Scottish Voices 2022/2023 and Edinburgh Film Festival Talent Lab alumni, James has written a feature adaptation of Love Song to Lavender Menace, in development with Compact Pictures. He is currently developing his gay action comedy short film Sleazy Tiger with Short Circuit through the Sharp Shorts scheme. He has just been awarded First Feature funding from Short Circuit to adapt Ode to Joy into his first feature as writer/director.
Johnny McKnight
Johnny is an award-winning writer, director, actor and performer. He recently wrote and performed in She’s Behind You for Traverse Theatre/NTS, directed by John Tiffany. The production won both a Scotsman Fringe First Award in 2025 and the Besties Skinny Award. Previous writing work with National Theatre of Scotland includes Little Johnny’s Big Gay Wedding and Dear Scotland, performing in An Appointment with The Wicker Man, and directing Nat McLeary’s Thrown for the Edinburgh International Festival.
As a writer for musical theatre, Johnny wrote the book for the stage adaptation of 101 Dalmatians, which premiered at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre before completing a UK tour and London run.
For screen, Johnny is currently developing projects with BBC Studios, Fable Pictures and Synchronicity Films. He has also been part of the core writing team on River City (BBC), writing over 50 episodes to date. His anniversary episode of River City won Best Drama at the RTS Scotland Awards.
Johnny has been described in the national press as “the new vanguard of pantomime”, with more than 36 productions to his name and multiple UK Pantomime Awards wins and nominations (most recently winner of Best Pantomime and an award for Achievement in Innovation).
Leyla Josephine
Award-winning filmmaker, playwright, poet and creative writing facilitator Leyla Josephine was named one of Screen International’s Rising Star Scotland 2022. She recently took part in Edinburgh International Film Festival Talent Lab and is a BAFTA Connect member.
Her solo shows Hopeless and Daddy Drag have taken the UK by storm with sold out shows across the country. She has also been featured on BBC Radio 4, BBC The Social, The Guardian Online, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Upworthy, The National and The Scotsman and Choice Words: Writers on Abortions alongside the likes Margaret Atwood, Audre Lorde and Gloria Steinem.
Mammalian Diving Reflex
Based in Canada, Mammalian Diving Reflex views innovative artistic interventions as a way to trigger generosity and equity across the universe. Founded by Artistic Director, Darren O’Donnell in 1993, Mammalian is a research-art atelier dedicated to investigating the social sphere, always on the lookout for contradictions to whip into aesthetically scintillating experiences. We are a culture production workshop that creates site and social-specific performances, theatre-based productions, gallery participatory gallery installations, videos, art objects and theoretical texts. Mammalian’s body of work is interconnected, varied and vibrant, reflecting our unique and growing body of knowledge and expertise on the use and function of culture. We create work that recognizes the social responsibility of art, fostering a dialogue between audience members, between the audience and the material, and between the performers and the audience. In all its forms, the company’s work dismantles barriers between individuals of all ages and cultural, economic and social backgrounds; we collaborate with non-artists and offer both participatory opportunities for the audience as well as the traditional option of simply watching the proceedings as they unfold. It is our mission to bring people together in new and unusual ways, in Toronto, Canada, our home-base, and around the world, to create work that is engaging, challenging, and gets people talking, thinking and feeling.
Maryam Hamidi
Maryam writes across screen, stage and radio. As a playwright her work includes Moonset (Citizens Theatre, 2023), which was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and The Words (A Play, a Pie and a Pint) which she adapted for BBC Radio 4. She has previously been a runner up for the Amnesty: Freedom of Expression Award, a recipient of the Playwright’s Studio Scotl=and New Playwright’s Award and a Peter Shaffer commission for the Citizens Theatre.
For TV she was a guest writer for Vigil 2 (BBC), Lockerbie: A Search for Truth (Sky) and Counsels (BBC) and wrote and directed two short films, Bahar (15’, 2021 Moquette films) and Bloody Love (7’, 2017 Clan Productions). She is currently developing her next short Welcome and her first feature film, Birthright with Screen Scotland, Moquette Films and Other productions. She was one of Screen International’s 2024 Rising Stars Scotland.
Ned Glasier
Ned Glasier is a London-based theatre-maker specialising in co-creating with young people. As the founder and Artistic Director of the mutli-award-winning Company Three, he created Brainstorm (Park Theatre/National Theatre/BBC), When This Is Over and The Future (Yard Theatre), Boat (Battersea Arts Centre), The Centre and The Best Day Ever (Pleasance Theatre) and The Coronavirus Time Capsule (Digital) amongst many other plays and projects. He is currently developing a range of projects with young people around happiness and human connection.
Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse
Jack and Robbie are playwrights and theatre-makers. Together they co-founded Wonder Fools, a theatre company that creates contemporary new work based on a diverse range of current and historical real-life stories. From these stories the company have taken theatre productions, performance installations and workshops to over 10,000 people across Scotland, with over 15,000 more engaging with their digital work online.
To date they have written and produced three full productions for Wonder Fools: McNeill of Tranent: Fastest Man in the World (2014-2015), an autobiographical show performed by retired athlete George McNeill, who in 1972 was the fastest man in the world despite never being allowed to compete in the Olympic or Commonwealth Games; The Coolidge Effect (2016-2020) an interactive performance that examines how pornography affects our mental health, relationships and sexual experiences using a blend of storytelling, poetry and science, which is now available as an audio play; and 549: Scots of the Spanish Civil War (2018–2020) telling the true stories of four miners from Prestonpans that volunteered as part of the International Brigade.
As part of Wonder Fools and Traverse Theatre’s international participatory project Positive Stories for Negative Times, they wrote Ozymandias with young people from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Widening Access to the Creative Industries department.
Most recently, Robbie and Jack were commissioned by Capital Theatres and the Traverse Theatre, creating new audio play with and for people with lived experience of dementia in Edinburgh, When the Sun Meets the Sky .
Robert Softley Gale
Robert is the Artistic Director of Birds of Paradise (BOP), Scotland’s touring theatre company that promotes the work of disabled artists in partnership with non-disabled artists and mainstream theatre venues and companies. Robert sits on the board of the National Theatre of Scotland and his previous work with the company includes My Left/Right Foot the Musical (Birds of Paradise), Girl X (Traverse Theatre, Citizens Theatre, Dundee Rep Theatre, Eden Court Theatre). Other theatre works include If These Spasms Could Speak (Arches, toured to Brazil, Estonia, Ireland, India and USA), Wendy Hoose (Birds of Paradise), Purposeless Movements (nominated for CATS Best Director award).
Sabrina Mahfouz
Sabrina’s most recent project was her cross-genre show A History of Water in the Middle East at the Royal Court Theatre, which she wrote and performed. She is one of the inaugural writers in residence at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre for 2019-20, and is working on theatre and TV projects with the Jermyn Street Theatre, Little Dot Studios and FX. She had three new anthologies published in October 2019 – Smashing It: Working Class Artists on Life, Art and Making It Happen (Westbourne Press), which was shortlisted for the 2020 People’s Book Prize; Poems for a Green and Blue Planet (Hachette Children’s) and Sabrina Mahfouz, Plays: 1 (Methuen Bloomsbury).
Her theatre work includes Chef, a play about an inmate of a woman’s prison who is also a haute cuisine chef, which won a Fringe First Award; Dry Ice, her first play based on her time working in strip clubs, directed by David Schwimmer and for which she was nominated as Best Solo Performer in The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence; Clean, a play about three women who work in the criminal underworld, which won a Herald Angel Award and transferred to Off-Broadway in 2015; and With a Little Bit of Luck, a gig theatre piece for Paines Plough with a live UK Garage score, which has been performed across the UK, including at the National Theatre and the Roundhouse, and was adapted for BBC 1Xtra radio, where it won the 2019 BBC Music & Radio Award for Best Drama.
Sabrina is the editor of the critically acclaimed anthology The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write (Saqi Books), a Guardian Book of the Year, and is an essay contributor to the multi-award-winning The Good Immigrant (Unbound), exploring her mixed heritage through the lens of British fashion. She won the 2018 King’s Arts & Culture Alumni Award for inspiring change in the creative industries.
Sara Shaarawi
Sara Shaarawi is a playwright from Cairo, based in Glasgow. In 2017, Sara began to take on producting projects, most notably project managing the Arab Arts Focus showcase at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and partnering with the Workers Theatre to crowdfund and create Megaphone, a new bursary aimed at supporting artists of colour based in Scotland.
In 2021, Sara’s first play Niqabi Ninja was produced by Independent Arts Project (Edinburgh) in association with Hewar Company (Alexandria), it opened at Shubbak Festival in London, followed by a Scotland-wide tour and a run at the Edinburgh International Festival.
Sara is also an occasional performer, performing in rehersed readings and often comperes events in Scotland, such as Chill Habibi and Morning Manifesto.
Stef Smith
Stef Smith is a multi award-winning writer working to international acclaim.
Work includes: Enough, Girl In The Machine, Swallow (Traverse Theatre); Nora: A Doll’s House (Glasgow Citizen’s Theatre); The Song Project, Human Animals (Royal Court); Acts Of Resistance (Headlong / Bristol Old Vic); Love Letter To Europe (Underbelly); How To Build A Nation (Young Vic); Remote (National Theatre Connections Festival); Tea And Symmetry (BBC Radio); Smoke (And Mirrors) (Traverse Theatre & Dot Istanbul for Theatre Uncut); Back To Back To Back (Cardboard Citizens); Cured (Glasgay! Festival); Grey Matter (The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen); Woman Of The Year (Oran Mor, Glasgow) and Falling/Flying (Tron, Glasgow).
Stef has won three Scotsman Fringe First Awards for Roadkill, Swallow and Enough. Roadkill also won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre, a Herald Angel Award, the Amnesty Freedom of Expression Award, a Total Theatre Award for Innovation, and the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Prize. Swallow opened to widespread critical acclaim, and also won the Scottish Arts Club Theatre Award. Girl in the Machine won the 2019 Science and Theatre Drama Award in Germany.
Recently Stef took part in the BBC Drama Writers Room and her Digital Drama Short pilot FLOAT was released on BBC iPlayer in October 2019.
Stef is currently under commission to the Lyceum Theatre, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Leeds Playhouse, National Theatre of Scotland, Royal Exchange Theatre and is on attachment at the National Theatre Studio. She is also an Associate Artist at the Traverse Theatre, Leeds Playhouse and Playwrights’ Studio, Scotland.
The PappyShow with Lewis Hetherington
Thanks For Nothing is a collaboration between The PappyShow and playwright Lewis Hetherington.
The PappyShow is a playful and physical ensemble theatre company who create distinctive and critically acclaimed productions, lead inclusive workshops rooted in kindness, and work tirelessly to develop the industry we move in through connection and uplifting. The PappyShow was formed in 2013 by Kane Husbands to bring people together to move, dance, create moments of radical joy, share stories and take time just to PLAY! They exist as a social enterprise – working across performance and platforming the marginalised identities that we believe society could do better with. Their physical training is central to the company and the company offer this for everybody and every body, no matter your previous experience. By moving, playing, talking and listening, they create rooms (physical or digital) that are full of heart and where you can just be you. Diverse and collaborative, their productions explore identities that are rooted in the lived experience of their performers and span from the stage to the screen.
Productions BOYS and GIRLS were critically acclaimed for their vibrant, revelatory and expectation-defying explorations of contemporary masculinity and femininity. Our upcoming shows What Do You See and Black Girl Magic will delve even deeper into exploring and elevating the underrepresented identities that we want to see on stage.
Lewis Hetherington is an award winning playwright, director and performance maker. His work is rooted in collaboration and storytelling. He is passionate about the arts creating space for social change. He has won two Fringe First Awards, the Arches Brick Award, and an Adelaide Fringe Award. He is one of the co directors of fieldwork performance. His work has toured extensively throughout Scotland and the rest of the world including performances in Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and the USA.
Tim Crouch
Tim is a playwright, director, performer and theatre maker based in Brighton, UK. He was an actor before he started to write and he still performs in much of his work.
Tim’s plays are characterised by an attention to their audience. There is a devotion to the liveness of theatre and a recognition that the audience are the ultimate collaborators in the creation of meaning at the point of performance. The plays are meticulously scripted but engineered in such a way to ensure that no two performances are identical. From the inanimate objects donated by the audience in My Arm, to the unrehearsed second actor in An Oak Tree, to the audience writing in I, Cinna (the poet) and their reading in Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation, to the audience embodying otherness in ENGLAND and Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel. Tim’s plays are narratively driven but pay as much attention to their form as to their story.
Travis Alabanza
Travis is a writer, performer and theatre maker from Bristol.
For stage, Travis wrote and performed in their debut show Burgerz which won the Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, sold out at Southbank Centre and Traverse Theatre and toured internationally. It was also voted one of The Guardian Readers Top Shows of The Year. The text is published by Oberon Books. Their play Overflow, which premiered at and streamed from The Bush, was met with critical acclaim including numerous four-star reviews and was shortlisted for the George Devine Award. Their latest theatre commission, Sound of the Underground, premiered as part of the Royal Court’s new season in 2023 to critical acclaim. Travis currently has a new show for stage in development with the Southbank Centre and Hackney Showrooms. For screen, Travis is developing projects with Lookout Point and See Saw.
Travis’ debut book None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary was published in 2022 by Canongate and in the US by Feminist Press in 2023. It won the Jhalak Literary Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and was listed in TIME Magazine’s 100 books of 2023.
Their work has also earned them a place on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list 2021, the Dazed100 list and in 2023 as an Evening Standard’s future stars of stage and screen.
Xhloe and Natasha
Xhloe and Natasha are a New York City based, multi disciplinary writing/performing duo that have been in collaboration for over a decade, creating absurdist clown physical theatre and comedy. They are known for creating work that is highly physical, fast paced, historically influenced, and inspired by archetypes of Americana. Xhloe and Natasha are three-time consecutive recipients of the prestigious Edinburgh Fringe Festival Fringe First Award for Outstanding New Writing. Their show “A Letter To Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads this First” was the recipient of the Soho Playhouse Encore Series Prize as well as the Broadway Baby Bobby Award for Excellence. Recently, they were named part of the “Theatrely 31” as young theatre makers poised for a meteoric rise and were awarded an “Offie” Off-West End Award for Best Performance. They have been called “the most promising young theatre-makers to emerge from Edinburgh Fringe in recent years” by Everything Theatre and “The Fringe’s most dynamic theatrical duo” by The Telegraph. Xhloe and Natasha are represented by the Gersh Agency.