All plays are available for purchase (PDF) or licence for performance – price on request for each play.
Let Them Eat Cake
Shortlisted for the Kenneth Branagh New Drama Writing Awards 2018.
Synopsis: Angela, the obedient daughter of a Baptist pastor, in her late 20s, has received a marriage proposal.
The problem is she’s been avoiding intimacy for years because she has not officially come out – to herself, her friends or her parents. With the surprise proposal utmost in her mind she is forced to examine her life and decide whether she is ready to risk alienating those nearest and dearest to her.
Angela has to decide whether to keep living undercover and marry a man she will never love, or stand up for her true identity and face the anticipated anger of her church and family community.
Target Audience: Adult
Cast: 3f, 2m
Genre: Drama
Duration: 75 minutes
The Thin Red Line
Synopsis: The Thin Red Line is a documentary play that was created as part of a Writing Residency with the Independents Liverpool Biennial in 2018.
It is a critical and creative response to the UNITED List of refugees deaths that has been displayed in its entirety by Liverpool Biennial (2018) on the hoardings on Great George Street.
The List is of 34,361 documented deaths of refugees and migrants, as at 5 May 2018, due to the restrictive policies of “Fortress Europe”.
This is the story of three of the people on the List. This play has been constructed using verbatim words of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe.
Parts of the List have been on display in Liverpool since 12 July 2018 – there have been numerous attempts to remove it from the Great George Street site. This List was presented to the public by Liverpool Biennial in collaboration with Istanbul based artist Banu Cennetoglu who decided to share the rawness of the List of people who had died in their attempt to make a new life Europe; the original research was collated by Geert Ates from Holland.
Target Audience: All ages
Cast: 1f, 2m
Genre: Drama
Duration: 45 minutes
Daddy’s Boy
Synopsis: Daddy’s Boy is available as both a stage and radio play; it was showcased as part of a Writing Residency with the Independents Liverpool Biennial in 2018 when Daddy’s Boy was installed at Tate Liverpool in August 2018.
Daddy’s Boy is a play about loyalty, friendship, love and death.
How strong are the bonds of family? Who is family? What choice does a new young father have but to honour his own father?
What decision will Ste make when faced with the moral dilemma?
Target Audience: Teenager – Adult
Cast: 2f, 2m
Genre: Drama
Duration: 50 minutes
An abridged version of Daddy’s Boy. Listen here.
Refuge(e) Picnic
Synopsis: This dystopian play is set in Liverpool in 2029 when a local Caucasian couple are targetted because their heritage is discovered.
They have kept secrets to blend in with wider society, now they are under the threat of what was hidden – from everyone, even their children – being revealed.
It’s the early afternoon when they have to decide if they will take flight as planned and thereby leave everything of their current lives behind.
The main question is will they have enough time to get their stockpiled precious items from their home and also collect their two children who are at different friends’ houses.
Firstly they have to persuade each other that there is no alternative, because nobody really wants to leave their home.
Target Audience: All ages
Cast: 1f, 1m
Genre: Drama
Duration: 40 minutes
A Whole New Ball Game
Synopsis: This short monologue is a tale from Stephen, he is an average amateur footballer, who has started coaching a local team when an enigmatic new man joins the squad. As Stephen gets to know Razzaq, a lone refugee from Syria, Stephen’s life changes forever.
Target Audience: All ages
Cast: 1m
Genre: Drama
Duration: 10 minutes
Sorry
Synopsis: This full-length play is the story of two families caught in a triangle of love, fear, and resentment in a time of social anxiety.
Jasmine Thorpe is a young Black English professional graduate who is caught up in a riot when she returns home for a surprise celebration. When her white English boyfriend is injured, and they are isolated, she has to rely on the assistance of her boyfriend’s racist father for survival. Her mother also arrives at the riot scene and together, the four of them, have to combine forces to face the hostility outside.
Target Audience: Adult
Cast: 2f, 2m (plus 6m – minor roles)
Genre: Drama
Duration: 90 minutes
Smoke and Mirrors
Synopsis: This short play explores the joys and horrors of meeting someone new. Speed dating – where everyone is using smoke and mirrors to obtain their objectives.
This play was conceived, written and performed within 24 hours for the Liverpool Fringe Festival April 2019.
Target Audience: Adult
Cast: 2f, 2m (1m multi-roling)
Genre: Dramatic Comedy
Duration: 15 minutes
The Mourning Bride
Synopsis: This play is an adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II set in 21st century Merseyside with an all female cast. The Mourning Bride is a tale centred around the connections of Eddie Junior, a newly bereaved heiress of a local Merseyside shopping chain. With her father recently buried, Eddie Junior embraces her freedom and unleashes all her passions with devastating effect.
The Mourning Bride is a story of love, power, jealousy and revenge. A woman scorned is to be avoided, but what happens when the whole cast is made up of women?
‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.’
William Congreve (1697) ‘The Mourning Bride’
Target Audience: Adult
Cast: 5f
Genre: Drama
Duration: 90 minutes
Home From Home
Synopsis: This stage play was commissioned by Liverpool City Council in 2019 for the first official Windrush Day (June 22). Home From Home tells the story of a Liverpool woman who enjoys a celebrated career in the NHS but also faces the threat of deportation after being caught up in the Windrush scandal. Home From Home is a story that both celebrates British life and also highlights the reality of being identified as an alien, an ‘other’ in your own home.
Target Audience: All ages
Cast: 2f, 2m (or 2f multi-roling)
Genre: Drama
Duration: 45 minutes
Enigma Stigma
Synopsis: Enigma Stigma is a stage play that is the story of Thomas Williams, a 20 year old gay man, whose life collapses when he discovers he’s HIV positive. This is a monologue in two parts – written for both Thomas and Shadow – his conscience and fragmented memory – who together remember and experience the raw fear, rejection, and final hope of learning the results of the blood test and navigating life after diagnosis.
Target Audience: Teenager – Adult
Cast: 2m
Genre: Drama
Duration: 40 minutes
More Than Blood
Synopsis: This full length play tells the story of an involuntary childless Black woman desperate to become a mother. It details her isolation, fear, desire and obsession with motherhood that takes forces her to abandon her existing family life to make a new life.
Target Audience: Adult
Cast: 5f, 4m
Genre: Drama
Duration: 75 minutes
Thursday’s Child
Synopsis: This full length radio play follows the odyssey of a young adult who tries to heal the rift between herself and her 63 year old widowed mother. Louisa Treadwell harbours anger about her early life; she believes her family life was all a lie, and therefore finds it difficult to forgive her mother or forget the past as she sees it. After her father’s death she discovers a family secret that haunts her for over a decade until she finally decides to find her own solution to rebuild the remnants of the happy family of her memory.
Target Audience: Adult
Cast: 7f, 6m (minor roles 1f, 3m)
Genre: Drama
Duration: 90 minutes
Friday the 13th – Nightmare before Xmas
Synopsis: This short play was one of four plays written, directed and performed in the 24 hours between 5pm, Friday the 13th December 2019 and 5pm, Saturday the 14th December 2019, based on the front page commentary from Friday morning’s British newspapers: The Results – Liverpool Reacts – 24 Hour Plays.
This play was presented as a radio drama exploring the subtly effective use of media saturation to change the voting choices of two young adults and millions like them across middle England.
This event was conceived as the Liverpool Arts community response to the election results on 12th December 2019.
Target Audience: Adult
Cast: 1f, 1m
Genre: Drama
Duration: 15 minutes
10° of Separation
Synopsis: This short screenplay was written following a commission from Northern Broadsides Theatre as part of their Digital Squad programme during the global pandemic of 2020 in the UK.
This story is presented as a series of online diary entries from clinical epidemiologist Dr. Areema Waqar, as she explores both how important 10° of separation are during a crisis, and struggles with her personal relationship to wearing her burqa and hijab.
Target Audience: Adult
Cast: 1f
Genre: Drama
Duration: 13 minutes
Tow The Line
Synopsis: This short screenplay was written following a commission Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust as part of their 2020 Black History Month Programme with a focus on ‘The Impact of Racism’.
The screenplay is in the form of a PSA showing the true experiences of British Black and other locally defined minority groups as the navigate systemic racism on a daily basis.
The PSA film is ideally presented in a workshop environment and is situated within a historical background so that the participants have an opportunity to discuss the lived experiences of Black people and see what the impact of racism is for some individuals.
There is the opportunity to discuss the effect that racism has on people’s mental health, and to engage in further discussions and move towards making structural and behavioural changes.
Target Audience: Teenager / Adult
Cast: 2f
Genre: Drama
Duration: 13 minutes 46 seconds
Black Boy and Tyger Cat
Synopsis: This short screenplay was written following a commission from Liverpool Everyman Playhouse and Falling Doors Theatre; Black boy and Tyger Cat is a part of the The Streets Where We Live production created to discover new truths about the slave trade and the streets where we live using new writing and performance art to support education as part of a bespoke walking tour curated by local Liverpool historian, Laurence Westgaph.
Target Audience: All Ages
Cast: 1m
Genre: Drama
Duration: Approx 10 minutes
The Tale of Thomas Davis
Synopsis: This short screenplay was written following a commission the Rural Black History Project as part of its aims to challenge the perception of rural England as an historical white space, by illuminating the work of historians whose research contradicts this perception.
This screenplay is a creation of a hypothetical biography, as part of a series of fictive emotional and personal histories based on concrete historical data found during rural Black history research.
Target Audience: All ages
Cast: 2f
Genre: Drama
Duration: 7 minutes 06 seconds
