Steve Waters

Steve Waters

Steve Waters is a playwright whose plays include: The Last King of Scotland, adapted from the novel by Giles Foden (Sheffield Theatres, 2019); Limehouse (Donmar Warehouse, 2017); Temple (Donmar Warehouse, 2015); Why Can’t We Live Together? (Menagerie Theatre/Soho/Theatre503, 2013); Europa, as co-author (Birmingham Repertory Theatre/Dresden State Theatre/Teatr Polski Bydgoszcz/Zagreb Youth Theatre, 2013); Ignorance/Jahiliyyah (Hampstead Downstairs, 2012); Little Platoons (Bush Theatre, 2011); The Contingency Plan (Bush Theatre, 2009; revived in a new version at Sheffield Theatres, 2022); Fast Labour (Hampstead, in association with West Yorkshire Playhouse, 2008); Out of Your Knowledge (Menagerie Theatre/ Pleasance, Edinburgh/East Anglian tour, 2006-8); World Music (Sheffield Crucible, 2003, and subsequent transfer to the Donmar Warehouse, 2004); The Unthinkable (Sheffield Crucible, 2004); After the Gods (Hampstead Theatre, 2002); and English Journeys (Hampstead Theatre, 1998).

His writing for television and radio includes Safe House (BBC4), The Air Gap, The Moderniser (BBC Radio 4), Scribblers and Bretton Woods (BBC Radio 3).

He ran the MPhil in Playwriting at Birmingham University between 2006 and 2011, and is now Professor of Scriptwriting at the University of East Anglia, where he convenes the MA in Creative Writing: Scriptwriting programme. He is the author of The Secret Life of Plays, published by Nick Hern Books.

Moving from satiric comedy to poignant family drama, Little Platoons explores what the retreat of the state...
A powerful play about the growing culture of human exploitation in the UK, delving below the surface to reveal a pers...
A subtle and topical play about European attitudes to Africa.
A hard-hitting play about the collapse of idealism in contemporary politics.
Part of The Contingency Plan, Steve Waters' epic portrait of an England of the near future, in the grip of u...
Part of The Contingency Plan, Steve Waters' epic portrait of an England of the near future, in the grip of u...
An absorbing study of attitudes towards outsiders, spanning two continents and sixty years.
A fictional account of the 2011 Occupy London movement, set in the heart of a very British crisis – a crisis of consc...
A thrilling drama that takes us behind closed doors to imagine the personal conflicts behind the making of political...
An electrifying thriller about corruption and complicity, adapted from Giles Foden's multi-award-winning novel.
A double bill of plays from the frontline of climate change – an epic portrait of Britain in the grip of unprecedente...
A double bill of plays from the frontline of climate change - an epic portrait of an England of the near future, in t...
A short play that explores our changing attitudes towards the landscape.
A poignant, bleakly comic short monologue told by a woman killed in a cycling accident.
Set against the low hum of the War on Terror, Why Can't We Live Together? is a kaleidoscopic vision of our t...