Biogs - First Night

Artistic Director Lisa Parry writes:

If you're coming to the show at Chapter on February 17, Theatre503 on February 19 or The Arches on February 22, here are the biogs of the writers whose work you'll see. I've interspersed them with photos from the #a160feb hashtag on twitter - each writer is holding up a word she feels best describes her play.

Enjoy!

SAM BURNS

Sam Burns participated in Paines Plough's Come to Where I'm From in 2010 and Sixty-Six Books at the Bush Theatre in 2011. She has recently completed the advanced writers’ programme at Sherman Cymru. Her play Not the Worst Place was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2011. She is currently working on a commission for the Bush Theatre.

Marged Parry

VITTORIA CAFOLLA

Vittoria is based in Belfast and has most recently worked with the highly respected Kabosh Theatre Company on Raiders of the Lost Story Arc, a play based on the transcripts of Spielberg and Lucas’ story conference Raiders Of the Lost Ark. It premiered at the Belfast Film Festival in April 2011.  In January 2011, she had a short radio piece produced by BBC NI  and directed by Eoin O Callaghan (producer of the award-winning 5 Minutes to Heaven) as part of the BBC's 360 Scriptwriting Festival.

She has collaborated with the Belfast-based Skewiff Theatre Company on a number of pieces: The Waiting Room, which was produced during The Belfast Fringe Festival in 2010, and at present on an interactive theatre piece based on the Guardian's The Ex Files Column.

POPPY CORBETT

Poppy Corbett is a writer, director and producer living in London.

She has studied at Royal Holloway, the Central School of Speech and Drama and at the Moscow Art Theatre School.

Writing credits include OMG! (Millfield Arts Centre); Your Nation Loves You (Old Vic Tunnels); Dave Gammon and the Christmas Service Station (Theatre 503, PLAYlist); Queen Victoria (The Rag Factory); Spiders (Soho Theatre Studio); The Glasshouse (CSSD); England: 2009 (CSSD).

She is an Associate of :DELIRIUM:.

Vittoria Cafolla

CLARE DUFFY

Clare is a playwright, director, dramaturg and in the final year of her doctoral research as practice in playwriting at Glasgow University. She co-founded Unlimited Theatre in 1997 and continues to write and create new work as a core artist of Unlimited Theatre, working nationally and internationally across different media.

Clare won the Platform 18 Arches New Directors Award in 2011, which is also supported by the Traverse Theatre and the National Theatre of Scotland. This enabled her to write and direct Money...The Game Show for The Arches and Traverse in March 2011. Clare is now working with Unlimited to hopefully tour Money in 2012. Her new play ANA opened in Montreal at Espace Go in November 2011 and will tour Scotland in 2012. Clare is also currently commissioned by Magnetic North (Edinburgh) to write Some Other Stars about a man with locked-in syndrome. Clare’s first full-length play, Crossings, was produced and published in 2005 by Sgript Cymru. It won a Pearson Award and a year residency at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. She has also written drama for BBC Radio Four.

Samantha Ellis

SAMANTHA ELLIS

Samantha Ellis’ plays include Cling To Me Like Ivy (Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Lowry Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth, North Wall), The Thousand and Second Night (LAMDA), A Sudden Visitation of Calamith (Menagerie Theatre), Startle Response (Young Vic Theatre workshop production), Sugar and Snow (Hampstead Theatre/BBC Radio Four), Martin's Wedding (Blind Summit Theatre/BAC), Patching Havoc (Theatre 503) and, for The Miniaturists, the short plays Postfeminism and Scattering (Arcola), Unfinished (Liverpool Everyman Theatre), and Cat in a Sieve (Southwark Playhouse).

She has also written short plays for Pursued by a Bear and Floodtide Theatre. She was a MacDowell Colony Fellow and has been in residence at Metal and on attachment at the Soho Theatre, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Hampstead Theatre. As a journalist she worked for publications including the Guardian, Evening Standard, Observer, Jewish Quarterly and Prospect.

She is writing a children’s play called Operation Magic Carpet for the Unicorn Theatre and Birmingham Repertory Theatre, and a book called How to be a Heroine for Chatto & Windus. Her play The Last Wolf in Scotland will be produced at the Edinburgh fringe in 2012. She blogs at http://samanthaellisblog.blogspot.com.

MARGED PARRY

Marged Parry studied Welsh literature and English at Cardiff University before embarking on a career in both television and theatre.

Her theatre credits include Yr Ystafell Gyfweld (Sherman Cymru, Sgript Slam, 2011) and The Demise of Photocopy Boy (Dirty Protest, Dirty Protest's Christmas Party, 2011). Her poems have been read on Radio Cymru and her work published in the Welsh literary magazine Tu Chwith.

Marged recently completed Sherman Cymru's advanced writers' programme and was assistant director on the Sherman's new writing project, Cityscape in 2010.

She worked as an assistant producer on Mosgito - a Welsh language magazine programme for teenagers before moving on to work as a marketing and communications officer for BBC Cymru Wales' flagship soap opera, Pobol y Cwm. She now works on Pobol y Cwm as an assistant script editor.