Authors

Azuka Oforka

Azuka Oforka is an actress well known for her appearances on Casualty. Her debut as a playwright, The Women of Llanrumney, was premiered at the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, in 2024. She was the joint winner of the Best Writer award at The Stage Debut Awards 2024.

The Women of Llanrumney

Janice Okoh

Janice Okoh won the Bruntwood Playwrighting Competition in 2011 with her play Three Birds, which was staged at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 2013, before transferring to the Bush Theatre, London. The play was shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award and the Alfred Fagon Award.

Her other plays include The Gift (Theatre Royal, Stratford East, 2020) and Egusi Soup (Menagerie Theatre Company & Eastern Angles, 2009).

Egusi Soup
Three Birds
The Gift

Faith Omole

Faith Omole is an actor and writer, winner of the prestigious Alfred Fagon Award, the leading theatre prize for Black playwrights.

Her plays include: My Father's Fable (Bush Theatre, 2024) and Kaleidoscope (unproduced, winner of the 2023 Alfred Fagon Award).

My Father's Fable

Antonio Onetti

Antonio Onetti is a well-known Spanish screenwriter, playwright and theatre director. He studied Drama at the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático de Madrid. He has worked as a dramaturgy and dramatic writing teacher.

He has worked in the Spanish television and film industry for over 25 years, being a screenwriter in over 20 projects, such as The Cathedral of the Sea, Cuéntame cómo pasó, 20-N: Los últimos días de Franco, or Lola, la película. He was also the co-creator of two very successful series: Amar en tiempos revueltos and Amar es para siempre.

As a playwright, he has staged and published all of his plays in Spain, although some have also been staged in other European countries, Latin America and Africa. He has been translated into English, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Romanian.

Bleeding Heart

Joe Orton

Joe Orton was an English playwright and author. His public career was short but prolific, lasting from 1964 until his death three years later. During this brief period he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies.

His first play to be staged, Entertaining Mr Sloane, won the London Critics’ ‘Variety’ Award as the best play of 1964. Loot, his second play to be staged, won the Evening Standard Drama Award for the best play of 1966. The Ruffian on the Stair and The Erpingham Camp were performed as a double bill at the Royal Court Theatre in June 1967 under the title Crimes of Passion. His television plays, The Good and Faithful Servant and Funeral Games, were shown in 1967 and 1968. What the Butler Saw, his last play, was staged in 1969, and won a 1970 ‘Obie’ Award for the best off-Broadway foreign play in New York.

Both Entertaining Mr Sloane and Loot have been filmed. Orton also wrote a screenplay for the Beatles which was never filmed, but was subsequently published as Up Against It. The novels, Head to Toe, Between Us Girls, The Boy Hairdresser and Lord Cucumber, and the play Fred & Madge were published posthumously.

Fred and Madge
The Visitors
Fred & Madge

George Orwell

George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair) (1903–1950) was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His works of fiction include Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), while his non-fiction includes The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) and Homage to Catalonia (1938).

Animal Farm
1984

Hugh Osborne

Hugh Osborne is a former university lecturer, now an actor and writer. He has appeared in numerous tours and West End shows, and his adaptation of Diary of a Nobody was a hit when it premiered at Royal & Derngate, Northampton, in 2011.

Hugh Osborne
Diary of a Nobody