Plays
My dramatic writing is usually based in strong, character driven action, with naturalistic, often darkly humorous dialogue. The setting however, is often fantastical (Cloud, Prometheus & Sisyphus, 20 Minutes) or science-fiction based (Being Someone Else, It All Went).
Here you can read a quick cast breakdown and description of the plot, as well as downloading a pdf of each piece (though please note that the copyright of all my writing belongs explicitly to me, and any use, commercial or no, should be with my permission only. etc.).
Also, please do take note of the year in which they were written, my style and craft have changed and improved a lot recently (2008-9) due to the Masters, and my time on the Royal Court YWP.
WARNING! SOME OF THE PDFs CONTAIN BAD LANGUAGE!
(though I’d be surprised if you hadn’t guessed that already)
EISMAS (TRAFFIC)Written: 2009 The action takes place roughly 30-40 years in the future, there has been large scale flooding across the world, accompanied by other ‘extreme’ weather, and continual power shortages. Global food supplies are scarce after several ruined harvests and a one child policy has been enforced throughout Europe. Eismas (Lithuanian for traffic) imagines a black trade in healthy males babies for which women are trafficked to the UK, for both that, and the ‘standard’ sex trade. This is a play about the dangers of commodifying humanity. It is also a love story, of a man who falls in love with his prostitute. |
BEING SOMEONE ELSEWritten: 2008-9 Synopsis: This piece follows a group of avatars in the largest online game the world has ever known. They are the best in their individual classes and spend the majority of their lives dedicated to an imagined world . In this world they meet for a special ‘real world’ quest, set by the games original, and renegade founder: Alex. At the same time we follow the avatars’ real world personas, thrown into series of a dark and dangerous situations. The mysterious hacker Alex begins to reveal why they are there. She asks them to join her. “We’re going to destroy The World”. View BEING SOMEONE ELSE |
20 MINUTESWritten: 2008 A short 20 minute dark comedy taking in themes of love, death, meaning, and temp work. A drunken young man stumbles onto a rooftop, fresh from a James Bond fancy dress party, intent on commiting suicide. However he runs into another apparent intended suicidee, a strange man, wearing some battered fairy wings, just standing. “They say, they say you’ve got 20 minutes. 20 minutes to get them down, from the moment they decide ‘I’m going to jump’ if you keep them away for 20 minutes, you’ve usually got them, it’s ok.” View 20 MINUTES |
BIRD WOMAN (RADIO)Written: 2007-8 The play is set both in 2008, in a sleepy suburb of a large town, somewhere in the Midlands, and 2013, in a series of interviews investigating the phenomenon of ‘Bird Women’, young girls who develop large skin-coloured wings, and the ability to fly. The piece follows both interview andlive events, following the story of Ellie MacKenzie, the first of her kind. View BIRD WOMAN |
IT ALL WENTWritten: 2007 It All Went opens on young man in temporary accomodation, stuggling to come to terms with the loss of his wife to the rising waters engulfing much of the east of England. In his box of scant remaining possesions he discovers a recording he made whilst on his gap year travels through flooding in india, 20 years wealier. “welcome to your apple i-life. record diary entries, take 8 mega-pixel photographs, listen to music, email home from anywhere with a gps position, this is your i-adventure. this is your i-life”
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PROMETHEUS AND SISYPHUS (RADIO)Written: 2006-7 A comedy containing fire, brimstone, and Sporks. Hell, inundated with souls following a more confused and schizophrenic Supreme Being who must hold in his head all of the earhtly religions, is being subject to substantial ‘cuts’. This is particularly so in the ‘antiquated punishments’ section to which Prometheus and Sisyphus are both damned. Lacking in space, their punishments are combined, and Prometheus, the ultimate freedom fighter, is tied to the rock which Sisyphus, philosophically content with his ‘lot’ in death, must push up a mountain… which in fact has been downsized, hillock is perhaps a more appropriate description. |
CLOUDWritten: 2006 A Kidnapping. An angel. A boy with no memory…. The Gods always leave a get-out-clause. Cloud broke the Lore when one day, he saved a boy from falling. His defence? Love. His punishment? To have his soul cleaved in two, unless, that is, he can find Icarus, find the boy he loves, memory wiped, placed somewhere in the whole of time and space, and convince him to love him. He has just two days. (Not asking much, then.) View CLOUD
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