News

October 2024

Hello! This is my yearly update (except I missed a year oops). I’ve had a play (Black Pill & Paternity) on in Devon, which if you are interested in psychology, family bonds, INCEL culture, gamming or connection you may like. As my friends will know I do not really like Shakespeare (I think we should study rap in schools instead!), however I received an email from an audience member which is striking and flattering so cringing aside, here is an excerpt from her take on my play: “We had no real idea of the meaning of Black Pill so we googled it and found another whole dimension to contemporary culture. And the play now takes on the dimensions of Hamlet as the question becomes one of suicidal ideation and the capacity for enactment. The startling movement when one man makes as if in memory, or fantasy, of suicide and the other starts up to stop the self destruction, is the focal point of enactment… And all this is conveyed without the need for gravediggers, Yorrick or a graveyard.

    If the protagonist is a Hamlet this means that Charlotte is an Ophelia sister/lover and it is interesting to contrast their respective fates. Whereas Ophelia is a suicide in a watery, flowery romantic madness, Charlotte is a thriving, feminist older sister who becomes the victim of a predator’s sexual violence as she walks home across the familiar local green. This is a contemporary perspective on a classic theme and allows the author to imagine the psychic trauma on the self image of the sons of the perpetrators. As contemporary forensic psychologists have shown, the perpetrator of sexual violence, too, is a victim. And where the lineage is between men and their sons this victim-perpetrator.-rescuer triad can brutalise the future of the adolescent boy who both can and cannot identify with a father who becomes dangerous.”

I had not really thought of any of that but how wonderful this audience member did!

I’m still working with the brilliant Clean Break facilitating creative writing workshops with women effected by the criminal justice system.

BBC writers room stuff is going very well, I’ve absolutely loved it!

That’s all, thanks for reading. Big love. Keep fighting the good fight!

October 2022

I have been running poetry/Script writing workshops for Clean Break since the start of 2022. It has been my pleasurer and honour to put together a collection of poems from the group. These poems are a sample of the work created, and I hope they will be an inspiration. It will be published in December 2022.

September 2022

I have just finished a new play!!! Called Black Pill and Paternity, Would you like to read it? Send me a message, I’d love to hear what you think….

August 2022

August was full on and fabulous! I was in Sidcup with 30 amazing new NYT members, writing for the Epic stages course, National Youth Theatre.

May 2021

CUNCH audio play will be released at the end of May 2021.

CUNCH (slang word for County Lines – using young people to move drugs from big cities to rural towns) is a poetic audio play about female friendship, and young people’s connection to nature, told through a story of County Lines. This is inspired by and draws upon my work with teens affected by gang exploitation in Hackney and Tottenham, my personal love of nature, and interest in mythic understandings of our connection to the wild, as well as a real anger at the ways the countryside & nature can feel inaccessible, how we rob city children of their right to access it!

I’m very excited by this project!

The play is about Janie and Lolita two 15-year-old girls who are sent on a county lines trip by Janie’s ‘boyfriend’ when they get lost in ancient woodland in Sussex it becomes clear that Janie intends to run away and take Lolita with her. Both girls have complex learning needs, Janie is severely dyspraxia and Lolita has undiagnosed autism, but the story does not focus on this, centring on the girls changing friendship and how they are effected by their surroundings and the magical characters they meet, such as a homeless lady called Yaga who takes them to see magical Yew trees.

The Children’s Commissioner estimates 46,000 + children in England are involved in child exploitation & gang activity. Based on my work I believe more girls are involved than the statistics show. Manipulation of young people with diagnosed or undiagnosed neurodiversity is also a factor in child exploitation. I want to show characters that are nondiverse and intelligent, but due to lack of care from wider social systems have become exploited.

This play uniquely mixes gritty urban realism with the poetic and mystical. Told from a place of truth, its target audiences are hard to reach young people affected by gang violence and county lines. It is a unique take on an important current issue, focusing on girls rather than the media representation of males. I am positioning the protagonists not as victims but young people aspiring for self-determination and connection with themselves and nature. 

CUNCH so far has been supported by Creative Youth Kingston allowing me to work with brilliant dramaturge Sarah Dickenson. I also worked at The Bush Theatre in there gorgeous room at the top where I wrote a first draft on a writers Allotment. Big up the Bush! And Big up trees!!! Now to get into the woods!