THEATRE SCRIPTS & PROSE
I have written many theatre scripts for professional and community performance, varying from the full length multi-lingual musical play,The Beautiful Violin, to short pieces for theatre-in-education companies, large-scale site-specific performances for major events like the Commonwealth Games and texts for dancers. The highly successful musical play, The Beautiful Violin, commissioned by Peshkar and Oldham Coliseum, was nominated for best new play of the year in the Manchester Evening News awards.
I love being part of a collaborative team and working with performers and directors in the rehearsal room. Almost all my work is written to commission and often involves researching specific issues (like the life of young British Bengalis in Oldham or the biography of a child soldier from the Sudanese Civil War). My work may incorporate poetic and realistic speech, song and striking visual imagery. Influences include Jacobean drama, visual theatre companies like I.O.U. and Horse and Bamboo, Expressionist films, Robert Wilson, David Lynch, Kneehigh Theatre, Andrea Dunbar, Edward Bond and storytelling traditions from different cultures.
I write prose about people's lives and the communities they live in, and have edited books about neighbourhoods in Barnsley and Dewsbury. I've written accounts of the life of Travellers and Gypsies in Yorkshire, landscape history and short, sharp pieces about urban regeneration.