Sphinx 30 Playwrights

Alli Smith

A.C. Smith is a playwright and songwriter who has won awards from the RSC and Soho Theatre. She has previously developed work with the Bush Theatre, HighTide, the Old Vic, and RADA. She loves exploring the boundary between real life and art, and has a specialism in cross-medium experimentation, collaborating regularly with artists from the worlds of dance, photography, mime, and film. Notable credits include: The Bomb (BBC World Service Radio), Lock & Key (VAULT Festival), and Dream Queen (Globe Theatre). She is a Co-Founder of London Playwrights’ Workshop and teaches on the MA Text & Performance at RADA

Anita Kelly

Anita Karla Kelly’s latest stage play, Buzzing, was part of Bristol Old Vic’s Rep season, tackling sexuality, mental health, teenagers and bees. Anita is part of Sphinx 30 women’s playwright initiative, the new writing group at Royal Court Theatre, Graeae’s ‘write to play year six’ and the playwright group ‘open sessions’ at Bristol Old Vic. Her latest monologue Flesh, was voted as one of the top eight monologues written in lockdown by The Guardian. Her latest radio piece produced with Naked Productions received Highly Commended at the BBC Audio Awards 2021.

April De Angelis

April De Angelis is an acclaimed playwright who has worked in stage, radio and television. Her plays include: My Brilliant Friend, a two part dramatization of Elena Ferrantes’ epic family saga (Rose Theatre Kingston and National Theatre, London 2019/20); The Village (Theatre Royal Stratford East, 2018); Frankenstein (Royal Exchange Manchester 2018, Jumpy ( starring Tamsin Greig, Royal Court 2011 & Duke of York’s Theatre, West End 2012, Melbourne and Sydney 2015); an adaptation of Wuthering Heights (Birmingham Rep, 2008); Wild East (Royal Court 2006); A Laughing Matter (Out of Joint at National Theatre, 2001); A Warwickshire Testimony (RSC, 1999); The Positive Hour (Out of Joint at Hampstead Theatre, 1997); Playhouse Creatures (Sphinx Theatre Company at the Haymarket Theatre 1993 and revived at the Old Vic Theatre, 1997 and Chichester Festival Theatre in 2013); The Life and Times of Fanny Hill (The Old Fire Station Oxford, 1991; revived at the Bristol Old Vic, 2015).

Other work includes the opera libretti: Flight (Glyndebourne Opera, 1997) and The Silent Twins (Almeida, 2007). Television includes Aristophanes (Channel 4/1995) and she has written extensively for radio including an acclaimed adaptation of Peyton Place (BBC Radio, 2002).

April is currently writing for series 10 of Doc Martin (Buffalo Pictures/ITV) and the book of a musical based on the film Saving Grace. She is also writing an original musical called Mother Gin (Theatre Royal Northampton) pencilled in for production in 2021 and writing new plays for Theatre Royal Stratford East and Headlong Theatre Company. Her new play Kerry Jackson will premiere at the National Theatre in 2021.

Bea Webster

Bea Webster (shey/they) is a Deaf queer Scottish-Thai actor, theatre-maker, writer and drag queen. Bea graduated with a BA Performance in British Sign Language and English from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Bea’s recent theatre credits include The Winter’s Tale (Royal Shakespeare Company), Holding/Holding On (National Theatre of Scotland), Mother Courage and Her Children (Red Ladder/Leeds Playhouse), peeling (Taking Flight).

Bea’s recent writing credits includes Is This A Fairytale? (Wonder Fools/Traverse Theatre), Squeezy Yoghurt (National Theatre of Scotland). Bea was nominated for Best Actor at the Stage Debut Awards 2019

Beth Flintoff

Beth is a playwright and theatre director living in Hampshire. Her writing has been long listed for The Hope Mill Prize 2021, The Papatango Prize, The Bruntwood Prize, and she was nominated for Most Promising New Playwright 2017 at the Off West End Awards. She is an Associate Artist at Proteus and Rabble Theatre Company and currently working on several new plays.
Her writing includes: The Ballad of Maria Marten (EasternAngles / Stephen Joseph Theatre), The I Of England, Matilda the Empress, Henry II, and The Last Abbot (all for Rabble), The Rivals (Watermill Theatre), The Rebellious Women of Wimbledon (Attic Theatre Company) and Greenham: One Hundred Years of War and Peace. She has collaborated twice as a writer / director with physical theatre ensemble Rhum and Clay, on Jekyll and Hyde and Hardboiled: The Fall of Sam Shadow, which toured with The Watermill before transferring to New Diorama in London (Offie nomination for Best director 2016). Beth also co-directed The Incident Room with David Byrne for New Diorama in 2019-2020.

Chloe Todd Fordham

Chloe’s work aims to explore intimate human relationships as well as big global stories. She hopes to amplify the voices of those who are denied one, to be inclusive and accessible, and to uncover broken systems with stories and heart. Recent work includes: Tapestry (developed with Play’s the Thing and featured in Taking the Stage Festival at Milton Keynes Gallery, 2019), Centre Ground (produced by Small Truth Theatre as part of Kensington Karavan in 2019) and Vagina Launch (co-created with Where’s my Vagina?, Queen Elizabeth Hall, WOW festival 2020).
Previous plays include: Sound of Silence (Bruntwood Prize Judges Award winner 2015), The Next Generation (shortlisted for Writers in Theatre Award run by Out of Joint 2017), Land’s End (shortlisted for Theatre503’s Playwriting Award 2014), The Debtor (developed with Theatre503), Elexion (Theatre503 2015), And Others (with Graeae and the NT, Acts of Courage Festival, National Theatre 2018).
Chloe has attended the Kenyon College’s Playwright’s Conference in Ohio (supported by Bruntwood and the Royal Exchange) and has an MA in Writing for Performance from Goldsmiths University. She was a resident writer at Theatre503 through their 503FIVE scheme (2015-2016) and is a graduate of the Arcola’s PlayWrought scheme and the Royal Court’s Young Writers programme.

Gemma Bedeau

Gemma was born in sunny Leeds to professionals who expected her to be a lawyer or a doctor or a lawyer-doctor. Instead she dropped out of Uni to design a low budget feature film where the director went to jail for VAT fraud, then she turned to writing for comics and stage. Gemma co-created and wrote the Glyph Award nominated blaxploitation space-opera comic Afroella and wrote for the Eisner-nominated Princeless for Action Lab. Gemma was one of the winners of Airplays radio play competition with Leeds Playhouse and BBC Radio Leeds with her debut radio play Soon Come. Her radio play The Ladies Room was recorded live for BBC R3 at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe. She was selected for Freedom Studio’s Street Voices 7 program with her short play Spirits, now commissioned to full length.

Ginni Manning

Ginni is a playwright, theatre maker and writer from Liverpool who co-wrote Dipalo, the ASSITEJ Award winning play, with Lalu Mokuku. She completed the Higher Education Certificate of Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool from 2009-2013 concentrating on Screenwriting and Writing for Performance. She was an inaugural participant in the Everyman and Playhouse Theatres Playwright Development Programme in Liverpool in 2015 and completed the M.R. Advanced Playwright Programme in London in 2018. Ginni has worked alongside the Lantern Writers, based at the Unity Theatre for five years. She is a member of Write Local Play Global, the playwright organisation associated with ASSITEJ (The International Association of Theatre for Children and Young Audiences) and performed at the ASSITEJ 2017 Cradle of Creativity. She has work on regularly in the North West and in the summer of 2018 participated in the Scenic Route Theatre lab with work performed in London. She is a facilitator and writer for Writing on the Wall based in Liverpool. She appeared at the Action Transport Theatre Writers Ball as Writer in Residence and assists their Young Writers group with award winning playwright Kevin Dyer.

Guleraana Mir

Guleraana is a writer, theatre practitioner and one half of The Thelmas, a female-led theatre company devoted to empowering women to redress the equality imbalance in the arts. She is passionate about creating diverse stories that are rooted in our modern society, and using her voice to explore what makes us human. Her debut play Coconut premiered at Ovalhouse, London in April, followed by a national tour. It earned her an OFFIE nomination for most promising playwright. She regularly writes for community and youth groups and has worked with organisations such as Royal Exchange Manchester, AGE UK Westminster, Unicorn Theatre, Almeida Projects, DreamArts, Rightful Place Theatre and Peer Productions. She has a keen interest in writing for radio and television and is currently a part of the BBC’s Northern Voices development program. Guleraana’s audio drama The Bigger Picture will receive its world premiere at SOAS University of London, as part of Decolonising History, co-commissioned by SOAS and Tamasha.

Hannah Treadaway

Hannah is a South West based writer, director and dramaturg. She is alumni of Graeae’s Write to Play programme and of the Regional Theatre Young Director’s Scheme three month placement at Wiltshire Creative. Most recently she has written monologue Specs of Light and interactive Twitter story Be Taylor Jones for Graeae Theatre Company, and spoken word piece Here for All the Queens Men and Wiltshire Creative. Folio Theatre and Wiltshire Creative also recently made an extract of her short play Home, originally written for Paines Plough, into a short film. Hannah has preciously worked with companies including Diverse City, Nuffield Southampton Theatres, Folio Theatre, The Bunker, Wyldwood Arts, Lighthouse Poole and HighTide Theatre. Examples of her previous work include an adaptation of Ali Baba for Wiltshire Creative and Hummingbirds, a part scripted and part devised physical theatre piece developed with support from Arts Council England, Nuffield Southampton Theatres, the Bunker and Salisbury Playhouse.

Jane Upton

Jane’s plays include Finding Nana (Pleasance Edinburgh Festival 2017 and UK tour 2018, dir. Katie Posner, New Perspectives), All The Little Lights (Fifth Word UK tour, Arcola Theatre: joint winner of the 2016 George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright and runner up for Best Play at the WGGB Awards), Watching The Living, an adaptation of two short stories by Daphne Du Maurier (New Perspectives, UK tour) Swimming (Menagerie theatre, Hotbed Festival, Soho Theatre and Edinburgh Festival).
Jane is currently writing a new play for Nottingham Playhouse. She was recently on attachment with the National Theatre and is the recipient of a Peggy Ramsay grant.

Janice Okoh

Janice is a multi award-winning playwright. Plays include: Egusi Soup (2014), Three Birds (2013) and The Gift (2020). All have toured nationally. Janice won the Bruntwood Prize in 2011 and has been shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award and the Verity Bargate Award. She has been a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award and the recipient of a Channel Four Playwriting Bursary. Janice is an accomplished radio dramatist, winning the Most Outstanding Achievement Award at the BBC Audio Drama Awards (2019) for her part in the adaptation of all six of Maya Angelou’s biographies and the award for Red Earth, Red Sky. Janice also writes for television and has several projects in development.

Joanne Lau

Joanne is a Canadian-Chinese writer living in the UK. She was in the BBC Writersroom Comedy Room and on the BBC New Talent Hotlist 2017. Joanne has been a finalist for the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Forum for TV Drama, Felix Dexter Bursary, Funny Women Comedy Writing Awards, and Canneseries/MIPTV in Development.
Joanne’s first full-length play Worth was written on the Yellow Earth Professional Writers Programme and shortlisted for the Royal Court Theatre/Kudos Writing Fellowship 2019. Her first short play Love By Numbers was staged with Little Pieces of Gold/Canal Cafe Theatre and has since been published in the Routledge Anthology Short Plays with Great Roles for Women.
Joanne is currently working on TV, film and radio concepts across the board. When not writing Joanne works as a neuroscientist in cancer research.

Julia Pascal

Julia trained as an actor and worked in the industry before reading English at London University during which time she joined the National Theatre. She was the NT’s first woman director with her adaptation of Dorothy Parker’s writing Men Seldom Make Passes. She is now a playwright, theatre director and scholar. Her texts focus mainly on women’s untold histories. Her play Theresa explored the secret story of British collaboration with the Nazis on the Channel Islands, it toured the UK and Europe and was dramatised by BBC Radio. Her other dramas include A Dead Woman On Holiday, set in the Nuremberg Trials, Crossing Jerusalem whose action happens during the last intifada and The Yiddish Queen Lear. Her plays have been produced at The Tricycle Theatre, The Park Theatre, The Finborough Theatre, Lilian Baylis Theatre, Riverside Studios and by Amici Dance Theatre and Theatre Delicatessen. In New York’s Lincoln Centre, scenes from her St Joan were workshopped at the Directors Lab and her rewrite of The Dybbuk was seen at the Theatre for the New City. She is published by Faber and Oberon Books.
Currently she is completing As Happy As God In France which reveals how Hannah Arendt and Charlotte Salomon were imprisoned in 1940 by the French before the Nazi occupation. Julia has been a Writer in Residence at the University of York, the Wiener Library and has received a Fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. After her PhD on The Absence of Jewish Female Characters on the Postwar English Stage she was appointed as a Research Fellow at King’s College, London University. She has been a leading figure in the struggle for gender parity in the arts.

Kathrine Smith

Kathrine Smith is a writer for TV, radio and stage. She has written for many TV series including London Kills, Suspects and EastEnders, and for the Radio 4 series Fault Lines starring Glenda Jackson.

Kathrine’s play All I See Is You won the National Octagon Prize and was first performed as part of the Octagon’s 50th anniversary season. The production toured nationally winning the Brighton Fringe International Touring Award, to the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival where it won the Oscar Wilde Prize for best new writing, and to Australia where the show was nominated for the Sydney Fringe Best Theatre Award.

Kathrine has also taught on arts projects in prisons and is a volunteer dramaturg/playwright with the children’s charity Scene & Heard.

Matilda Ibini

Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini is an award-winning, bionic playwright and screenwriter of Nigerian heritage from London. Matilda was awarded a scholarship from BAFTA and Warner Brothers to study a Masters in Playwriting & Screenwriting. Matilda was selected as a Star of Tomorrow 2020 by Screen Daily Magazine, a feature film screenplay she co-wrote with Gabriel-Bisset Smith was selected as part of The Brit List 2020 and she is an Arts Foundation Futures Award 2021 Finalist.
As a playwright Matilda has had residencies with Sphinx Theatre, English Touring Theatre, Soho Theatre, BBC Writersroom, Graeae Theatre and the National Theatre Studio. Her debut play Muscovado was produced by BurntOut Theatre, premiered in October 2014 and won the Alfred Fagon Audience Award in 2015. Her audio drama The Grape that Rolled Under the Fridge was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Her next play Little Miss Burden was produced by Harts Theatre Company and the Bunker Theatre; it premiered at the Bunker Theatre in 2019, was a finalist for an OffWestEnd Award for Best New Play, won a Popcorn Finalist Award 2020 and was published by Concord Theatricals. Little Miss Burden will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2021.
Screen credits include: BAFTA TV-Nominated CripTales for BBC America & BBC4. Unprecedented Series, Headlong & Century Films for BBC4, Head Over Wheels a short film produced by Open Sky Theatre & Wrapt Films. Her work has been staged at the Old Vic Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, Royal Court Theatre, Soho Theatre, Arcola Theatre, Bunker Theatre and Vaults Festival. She has screen projects in development with BBC Films, Home Team, Ardimages UK and Raw TV.

Maureen Lennon

Maureen is a graduate from the English and Theatre Studies BA from The University of Bristol and the Writing for Performance and Publication MA from The University of Leeds. She is an Associate Artist of Middle Child Theatre, a Leeds Playhouse FUSE writer 2019 and a co-founder of new writing and storytelling company Bellow Theatre. In 2020 her play Helen was shortlisted for the Theatre 503 International Playwriting prize.
Her last play, Us Against Whatever was produced in 2019 by Middle Child Theatre in association with Hull Truck Theatre and Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse with support from The British Council and The National Theatre Studio. It is published by Oberon. She has also written work for Paines Plough, Sheffield Theatres, Pilot Theatre and Hull Truck Theatre.

Ming Ho

Ming writes for stage, screen and audio. Her play The Things We Never Said (BBC R4; featuring Sian Phillips and Lia Williams) won WGGB Best Radio Drama Award 2018. Other credits include Eastenders, Casualty (BBC TV); Heartbeat, The Bill (ITV); Riot Girls: Male Order (BBC R4) and commissions for LAMDA, RADA and Leeds Playhouse.
Of Chinese/Welsh heritage, Ming wrote Citizens of Nowhere? for Chinese Arts Now (Southbank Centre & Edinburgh Fringe) exploring roots and identity in Brexit Britain. Its central character, Jane Lo, inspired short film British People, commissioned as part of The Uncertain Kingdom anthology (BFIPlayer, Amazon, iTunes, Curzon Home, GooglePlay 2020)
Ming has also worked in TV drama development, script editing series such as Hamish Macbeth (BBC) and co-creating McCready and Daughter for Ecosse Films/BBC Northern Ireland. Her play Exhumation, written on the Royal Court Theatre Writers’ Group was wrokshopped there with director Lucy Morrison. In 2019 she was Writer in Residence at Theatr Clwyd, which has sponsored her on the Sphinx 30 programme.

Morgan Lloyd Malcolm

Morgan is a playwright and screenwriter. Best known for Emilia (The Globe, 2018) which transferred to the Vaudeville Theatre in 2019 and won several awards including the Olivier Award for Best Comedy and the Mousetrap Award for Best Play. Morgan was also shortlisted for The Charles Winter Most Promising Playwright Award for her play Belongings (Hampstead Theatre/Trafalgar Studios 2011), and has been a part of the Soho Six (Soho Theatre) and on attachment with National Theatre Studio. Other work includes: The Wasp (Hampstead Theatre/Trafalgar Studios 2015), Hellscreen (Vault Festival 2015), Edie’s Diary (Royal Exchange Theatre/Sara Robinson theatre 2014), Alice in Wonderland (Bolton Octagon 2014). Morgan has co-written several acclaimed immersive site specific plays with Katie Lyons, produced by Look Left Look Right, including You Once Said Yes, Above and Beyond and Once Upon a Christmas. She has written two large community plays fro the Old Vic New Voices; Platform and Epidemic, and has received commissions from Headlong, The Old Vic, Clean Break, The RSC and Theatre Royal Plymouth amongst others.
Morgan has written for and been commissioned by ITV, ITV2, BBC and Channel 4. Emilia has been optioned for film and Morgan is currently in development on this as well as several TV drama and comedy projects. She is also developing a book adaptation for film with Lucky Chap Films and adapting her play The Wasp into a screenplay for Paradise City Films.

Polly Wiseman

Polly trained as an actor at RADA and began her writing career at The Royal Court Theatre Young Writers Programme and Soho Theatre Writers Programme. Plays include: Femme Fatale (South-East Tour and Omnibus Theatre London), Damage Control (Playground Theatre), Somewhere In England (Eastern Angles tour) Manchester Sound (Home Mcr, nominated for a Manchester Theatre Award), You Know The Answer (Jermyn Street Theatre), The Power (Short-listed for the Nick Darke Award), Bright (Soho Theatre, Time Out & Independent Critic’s Choice Award) Trying It On (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, adapted for BBC TV), The Pinball Master (National Theatre Studio at Hampstead Theatre), and and Swedish Rustic (BAC). Polly is currently under commission to Eastern Angles, Playground Theatre, Riverside Studios and Fireraisers and has been selected for the 2021 Criterion New Writing programme.

Punam Ramchurn

Punam currently works at MIF and worked previously as the Director of Rochdale Literature & Ideas Festival Director, within Community Services. She was previously the Senior Literature Development Officer at Oldham Libraries. Punam graduated from Salford University with a BA in Television and Radio (1997) and from Liverpool John Moores University with MA Screenwriting (2004). Theatre credits include The Rumba Bar (2018, North-West tour), Take Back (2016, Dance House Theatre) Zilla (GAP Theatre) Chocolate Pudding and Jesus Christ (2009, Waah Productions and Kali Theatre). Film and Television credits include Coronation Street (2021), Tale of Two Cities (2014, CBBC TV, LA Productions), and Diamonds and Ruby (2004, Northwest Vision Short Film).

Rommi Smith

Rommi Smith is an award-winning poet, playwright, theatre-maker, performer and librettist. A three-time BBC writer-in-residence, she is the inaugural British Parliamentary Writer in Residence and inaugural Poet-in-Residence for Keats’ House, Hampstead.
Shortlisted for a Southbank Show Award, Rommi’s plays have been performed as part of the Edinburgh Festival and BBC Radio 3 & 4 and produced by theatre companies from Paines Plough to Pentabus. Derby Theatre commissioned her digital play All The Places We Could Travel, a response to the global pandemic. Her writing is part of White Open Spaces published by Oberon.
Rommi holds a practice-based doctorate in English and Theatre. her academic writing was first published by New York University Press as part of the groundbreaking book Imagining Queer Methods (2019). She is recipient of a Hedgebrook Fellowship and is a winner of the Northern Writers’ Prize for Poetry 2019. She was recently awarded a Cave Canem fellowship in the USA, and is currently writer-in-residence for TopFoto, where she is developing a series of poem-monologues and lyrics for theatre.

Sarah Connors

Nominated by The Bush Theatre, Sarah Connors is an emerging playwright, living in Cornwall. She attended Luton University and taught for twenty years in the primary sector. In 2019 she stepped away from a career in education to fulfil a long-held ambition to be a playwright. Since then she has attended a playwriting course with John Burgess, WriteWest playwriting course with Papatango and Writing with the Minack Theatre with KEAP. She has been a finalist in: Papatango Prize 2020, Phil Fox Award 2020, Nick Darke Cornish Talent Award and short listed for Theatre 503 International Prize for playwriting for her play Pushing On Open Doors.

Sarah Grochala

Sarah’s play S-27 won the 2007 Protect the Human Playwriting Competition and was shortlisted for th King’s Cross Award and the Leah Ryan Award for Emerging Women Writers. S-27 premiered at the Finborough Theatre in June 2009. International revivals of the play include productions at the Griffin Theatre in Sydney in 2010 and on the Toronto Fringe in 2012. In 2011 Sarah was the winner of Off West End’s Adopt a Playwright Award for her play Smolensk. Her play Star Fish was shortlisted for the 2016 Nick Darke Award and BBC Sceipt Room 10. Other full length plays include: Waiting for Romeo (Pleasance Islington 2009; Edinburgh Festival 2006), Open Ground (Theatro Technis 2005) and Home Free.

Sarah McDonald Hughes

Sarah is an actor and writer from Manchester. Plays include: Sherbert (Octagon Bolton), Turbines, How to be a Kid (Paines Plough),Blackout (Dukes Lancaster), The Manchester Project (Monkeywood Theatre/HOME/National Theatre), Trial, Multi Story (Octagon Bolton / Monkeywood),Our Pals and The North (Royal Exchange Studio). Radio includes: The Archers, Blind School, A Roof Over Our Heads, Dad, Take Me to Redcar, Maine Road (BBC R4). She recently wrote a podcast adaptation of Tracy Beaker for CBBC. Television includes numerous episodes of Doctors for BBC1. Sarah works regularly as an actor in theatre, television and radio and is Co-Artistic director of the award winning Monkeywood Theatre. She is currently part of The Archers regular writing team.
Sarah won the 2018 Writer’s Guild Award for her pay How To Be A Kid and the 2017 National Octagon Prize for her play Sherbert, co-written with Curtis Cole.