Authors

Luigi Pirandello

Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer, winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature. His plays include Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921).

Six Characters in Search of an Author
Naked
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Liolà

Evan Placey

Evan Placey is a Canadian-British playwright who grew up in Toronto and now lives in London, England.

His plays include: Peter Pan with Vikki Stone (Rose Theatre, Kingston, 2023); Jekyll & Hyde (National Youth Theatre, 2017 West End season); Consensual (National Youth Theatre, 2015 West End season); Girls Like That (Synergy/Unicorn Theatre; first produced and commissioned by Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth and West Yorkshire Playhouse, 2013; winner of the Writers' Guild Award for Best Play for Young Audiences); Mother of Him (Courtyard Theatre; winner of the King’s Cross Award for New Writing, RBC National Playwriting Competition, Canada, and the Samuel French Canadian Play Contest); Banana Boys (Hampstead Theatre); Suicide(s) in Vegas (Canadian tour; Centaur Theatre Award nomination); Scarberia (Forward Theatre Project/York Theatre Royal); How Was It For You? (Unicorn Theatre); Holloway Jones (Synergy Theatre Project/schools tour/Unicorn Theatre; winner of the Brian Way Award 2012 for Best Play for Young People; Writers' Guild Award nomination); WiLd! (tutti frutti/UK tour and USA); and Pronoun (National Theatre Connections festival, 2014).

Work for radio includes Mother of Him (BBC Radio 3/Little Brother Productions).

Evan is a Creative Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Southampton, and also teaches playwriting to young people for various theatres, and also in prisons.

Evan Placey
Girls Like That
Pronoun
Consensual
Girls Like That and other plays for teenagers
Banana Boys
Holloway Jones
Jekyll & Hyde
Peter Pan

David Planell

David Planell was born in Madrid in 1967. He studied Cinema and Television at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and has been a scriptwriter for television since 1990. In 1995 he took part in the Royal Court International Summer School where his play Prime Time was given a workshop directed by Roxana Silbert. Bazaar was his first play to be produced. It was the winner of the Comedias Hogar de Teatro prize and premiered in Puerto Santa Maria (Cádiz) in August 1997 followed by a tour throughout Spain. Bazaar had its British premiere as part of the New European Writers' Season at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in November 1997. He also co-translated Rebecca Prichard's Essex Girls as part of Nueva Dramaturgia Británica in December 1987.

Bazaar

Frances Poet

Frances Poet is a Glasgow-based writer. Her stage work includes: Still (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2021); Maggie May (Leeds Playhouse, Leicester Curve & Queen's Theatre Hornchurch co-production, 2020); Fibres (Stellar Quines & Glasgow Citizens Theatre, 2019); Gut (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2018); Adam (National Theatre of Scotland at the Traverse Theatre, 2017); Faith Fall (Òran Mór and Bristol’s Tobacco Factory, 2012) and What Put the Blood (Abbey Theatre, 2017). She has also written a number of free adaptations including Strindberg's Dance of Death (Citizens Theatre, 2016) and Molière's The Misanthrope (Òran Mór, 2014).

Her TV and radio work includes River City and The Disappointed, aired on BBC Radio Scotland in 2015. Her short film, Spores, screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival and Bogoshorts Festival, Bogotá, in 2016.

Frances Poet
Adam
Gut
Fibres
Maggie May
Still

Alicia Pope

Alicia Pope is a teacher and writer. She has taught GCSE and A-Level English, Drama and Theatre Studies, and currently teaches Drama in Bath.

She is the author of Princess & The Hustler: The GCSE Study Guide (Nick Hern Books, 2024), a guide to Chinonyerem Odimba's play.

Princess & The Hustler: The GCSE Study Guide

Sam Potter

Sam Potter trained at Dartington College of Arts, Trinity College Dublin, the NT and the RSC.

As a director she has worked at Hampstead Theatre, the RSC, the NT and Glyndebourne Opera. She was the Literary Manager at Out of Joint from 2011 until 2013 and the Creative Associate at Headlong from 2013 until 2015.

Her debut play, Mucky Kid, which opened at Theatre 503 in 2013, earned her a Most Promising New Playwright Offie nomination and a place on the 2015 Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme.

In 2015 she was Papatango's Resident Playwright supported by the BBC Performing Arts Fund and was one of five writers invited to take part in the Tricycle's inaugural New Writers' Programme, NW6.

Other plays include: Hanna (Papatango, 2018); Tuesday play (Daily Plays by Etch, Squint, The Pleasance Theatre); Daniel (New Plays Festival, Tricycle Theatre); and The Same Old Same Old Same (Oxford School of Drama, Soho Theatre).

Hanna

Mike Poulton

Mike Poulton is an award-winning dramatist whose many adaptations and translations for the stage include: Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl (Chichester Festival Theatre, 2024); Robert Harris's Imperium (Royal Shakespeare Company); The York Mystery Plays (directed by Philip Breen at York Minster); Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies (directed by Jeremy Herrin for the Royal Shakespeare Company); Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (directed by James Dacre at the Royal & Derngate, Northampton); Fortune’s Fool (directed by Lucy Bailey at the Old Vic, London); Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (directed by Lucy Bailey at The Print Room, London); Schiller’s Luise Miller (directed by Michael Grandage for the Donmar Warehouse, London); Anjin: The English Samurai (directed by Gregory Doran for Horipro in Tokyo); Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company); Schiller’s Wallenstein (directed by Angus Jackson at Chichester Festival Theatre); Schiller’s Mary Stuart (directed by Terry Hands at Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea (directed by Lucy Bailey at Birmingham Repertory Theatre); Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (directed by Philip Franks at Chichester Festival Theatre, and Terry Hands at Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Ibsen’s Rosmersholm (directed by Anthony Page at the Almeida Theatre, London); Strindberg’s The Father (directed by Angus Jackson at Chichester); Myrmidons (directed by Simon Coury at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin); and a two-part adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and performed at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in the West End, and on tour of the US and Spain).

His acclaimed version of Schiller’s Don Carlos premiered at the Sheffield Crucible in a production directed by Michael Grandage with Derek Jacobi as King Philip II of Spain. It has since been widely performed, including by Rough Magic Theatre Company in Dublin (directed by Lynne Parker), and at the Göteborgs Stadsteater (directed by Eva Bergman). Other productions include Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (West Yorkshire Playhouse/Liverpool Playhouse); Turgenev’s Fortune’s Fool (directed by Arthur Penn at the Music Box Theater, Broadway; nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play, and winner of seven major awards including the Tony Awards for Best Actor for Alan Bates and Best Featured Actor for Frank Langella); Uncle Vanya (directed by Michael Mayer at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, Broadway; with Derek Jacobi, Roger Rees and Laura Linney); Three Sisters (directed by Bill Bryden at the Birmingham Rep; with Charles Dance); Ghosts (Theatre Royal Plymouth); The Seagull, Three Sisters, The Dance of Death and an adaptation of Euripides’ Ion (all directed by David Hunt at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester).

He was made an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2017.

Mike Poulton
Wallenstein
Morte d'Arthur
Luise Miller
Judgement Day
Rosmersholm
Don Carlos
The Canterbury Tales
The Father
Wolf Hall (stage version)
Bring Up the Bodies (stage version)
A Tale of Two Cities
Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies (stage version)

Tom Powell

Tom Powell is a playwright and screenwriter. His plays include The Silence and The Noise (Papatango New Writing Prize, 2021) and Little Echoes (Hope Theatre, London, 2019).

Papatango Plays
The Silence and the Noise