Writing Projects
MARITAL BED – rehearsed reading at Greenwich Theatre 30th June, 7.30pm
When an exhausted, harassed mother (and zoologist in a previous life) is tempted by a galvanising opportunity to return to the lab, she suggests outsourcing her partner’s sexual needs to a stranger, smashing open a pandora’s box of long-buried truths and uncomfortable revelations as she wrestles with how to get more satisfaction in her life without hurting her husband’s feelings... Marital Bed is a story about pornography, desire and laundry, an early extract from the play was runner-up for Comedy Writing at the Funny Women awards in 2023.
BOUND – in development
In 1926, on the banks of the hard-working Derwent, seamstress Violet takes a break from toeing the line and dreams dangerously of loving more easily; her troubled husband Jack – a veteran of the Great War - discovers it is more straightforward to hide a wife than a temper and a trembling hand.
In 2026, Yas is in therapy again and researching her family tree, she wonders if feeling too much is a genetic glitch in her DNA, as she weighs up another appeal for a non-toxic relationship with her fragile mum.
In the years in-between women gather in a cold room to make do and mend, sewing costumes for the Mad Hatter’s Ball, army uniforms for temporary residents and itchy grey smocks that change subtly over the years, but practicality – security – maintains the grip on design.
The term ‘crazy’ has been levelled at all these people, it has reduced them to a silence that feels so true some days they agree that their feelings, their experience, their voice doesn’t matter too. But some days, they speak up in defiance of the charge and one day, in the quietest way, they change history.
RED BASIN - multi-media epic about VR mitigated climate catastrophe
Silicon Valley, 4th July 2035. Tension between old and new, reality and illusion, freedom and control runs as high as the few remaining old-growth California redwood trees left on the planet. A marginalised teen finds fleeting happiness in a virtual rendering of the ancient forest where she was born, guided by a chorus of thousand-year-old trees she fights to save her asthmatic brother’s life; when an opportunity to return to Red Basin IRL turns out to be a big-tech marketing ploy, followed by a desperate maternal betrayal, the revelation ignites a fire in Kelyn and - inspired by the resilience and co-operation of the forest – she and her peers demand a future in partnership with nature. It is not blind hope that propels a tree towards the sunlight, it is wisdom!
Red Basin is a multi-media play that asks what happens when our connection with nature is severed, how much we care about that and how much technology can be a replacement for it; a coming-of-age adventure story about adaptation, activism and loss of innocence. It was a semi-finalist at the National Playwrights Conference (USA).
BLOODY WOMAN - stage adaptation of Little Blue Lines
Amy was always the maternal one, more dolls than pencils, her mother says. When she hits peak season for baby making, she keeps trying, even at the risk of losing everything else.
Bloody Woman is a brutally honest dark comedy about a person broken by society’s expectations of their body, striving to be happy on her own terms. It explores the consequences of mental health conditions left untreated and celebrates women rising up to use their voices with volume and courage and truth. The play was long listed in the top 35 of the Bruntwood award, and the award-winning audio adaptation, Little Blue Lines, was broadcast in five 15 minute episodes on BBC Radio 4.
BLONDES PREFER GENTLEMEN - one woman show performed at the Tristan Bates theatre
In 2012 I wrote, produced and performed a one woman show called Blondes Prefer Gentlemen about a woman who’s driving force to survive is the life and work of Marilyn Monroe.
