The Stellar Season of Plays
Stellar Theatre is delighted to offer a curated collection of new writing by established and emerging playwrights. Their awards include an Offie nomination for Best New Play, a Fringe First, Herald Angels, and Theatrical Management Association/Society of West End Theatre awards.
Their plays encompass a span of themes and issues, the unifying thread of which is that each provides provocative food for thought and post-show conversation.
Julia Pascal Honeypot and Happy As God in France
Julia is a playwright, scholar, and theatre director. She was the first woman director at the National Theatre with Men Seldom Make Passes, her adaptation of Dorothy Parker's writings, and has also acted at the National. Her plays, which mainly focus on women living on society's edge, have been produced on both BBC TV and radio, and have been staged extensively in the UK, Europe and the USA. They are published by Faber and Oberon Books. Julia was awarded a Fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, and gained her PhD in Theatre from The University of York. She is also a Research Fellow at King's College, London.
Honeypot
Sweden, Paris, Tel Aviv, 1982. Susanne is a beautiful 35‐year‐old Swedish woman. When her father dies suddenly, she discovers that he was a hidden Jew. This revelation galvanises her to leave her husband and make a wild journey of self‐discovery.
Happy As God in France
Based on a true history. In May 1940, 34‐year‐old Hannah Arendt was arrested as an ‘Undesirable’ in Paris, just before the German occupation. She, along with 24‐year‐old artist Charlotte Salomon and 16‐year‐old Eva Daube, were imprisoned near the Spanish border. This drama is the first to reveal a secret French history which, even today, is part of the country’s cultural amnesia.
Jess Moore Daddy Issues and Seed Bank
Jess is an award-nominated playwright, a scriptwriter, a director, and a filmmaker. Her Audible Original series, Book Lovers, has been released in the US and UK. She is a OneFifty Artist. Her plays have been produced Off West End and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and her short films have screened at several international film festivals.
Daddy Issues
Harri is a highflyer in the midst of heartbreak that she can’t handle. Convinced by her equally successful and emotionally dysfunctional ex that the traditional models of marriage and parenthood are broken, they embark on a completely logical and utterly flawed version of their own. Inspired by a line from Still Life by Alexander Dinelaris, “We all want to live. We just need permission”, the play considers how far we’ll push ourselves to do what we think we should do before we will allow ourselves to do what we want to do.
Seed Bank
It’s 2029. The ice has gone. The coral has gone. The forests have gone. The whole world is at war. Should we continue to procreate on a planet we’ve destroyed? Trapped in a flooded seed bank, deep in the Artic Circle, Professor Evie Evans and Doctor David Williams face that choice.
Lorien Haynes Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell My Daughter About Men and Virtually Single
Lorien’s first play, Good Grief, has been produced as virtual theatre, starring Sian Clifford and Nikesh Patel, directed by Natalie Abrahami. Lorien developed the play Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell My Daughter About Men into a film to support survivors of abuse and assault. This has won multiple international awards including Best Feature at the Cannes Independent Festival 2022, and Best Actress at the New York International Film Awards 2022. Her third film,The Lift, has just won Best Screenplay at the Paris Independent Film Festival. She has recently starred in the workshop production of Good Grief at The Cherry Lane Theatre in New York, and in 2020 performed in her Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell My Daughter About Men at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe, and at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in LA. As an actor she has worked on TV as a series regular in EastEnders, The Upper Hand and The Knock, in BBC Radio in Brother Cadfael and Bugging the System, pilots Kensal Town and Virtually Single, and the US podcast America 2.0.
Everything I Ever Wanted to Tell My Daughter About Men
A woman traces her relationship history backwards, exploring the results of a sexual assault on her choices and relationship experiences, from teen pregnancy to infidelity and addiction. Stellar’s reading will be in conjunction with charities The Circle and Refuge.
Virtually Single
It’s lockdown. Emboldened by red wine, a fortysomething woman in London braves her first Zoom date with a hot guy in snowy Montana. A short play devised through improvisation, Virtually Single explores the tragicomic challenges of dating during the pandemic. Created by Lorien Haynes and producer Amy Gardner of www.finitefilmsandtv.com.
Virtually Single has won numerous accolades including Best Comedy Short, awarded by Touchstone Independent Film Festival in August 2023, and awards at London Independent Film Festival 2021, Cannes Independent Film Festival 2021, Berlin International Film Festival 2022, LA Independent Woman Film Awards to name but a few. Lorien was also awarded Best Actress for her performance in Virtually Single at the New York International Film Awards.
Rasheda Ashanti Malcolm House of Women
Rasheda is an author, journalist, playwright, and #TwentyIn2020 author, chosen as one of the twenty authors of colour to be published in 2020. Her debut novel, Swimming with Fishes, was published by Jacaranda Books in 2017, and her second novel, Love Again, in 2020. Rasheda is the CEO of WILDE (Women in Literature Development & Empowerment) and the founder of Every Woman Inspired International Roadshow. She lives in London and designs and facilitates creative writing workshops, domestic abuse awareness workshops for women and girls, and is currently working on her third novel.
House of Women
A dramatisation of life as a case worker in a women’s refuge. Rasheda uses her protagonist, Avril Morgan, to offer an insight into the interactions between the women. The characters display and act out the abusive and narcissistic behaviours of their perpetrators, showing how the tortured can become the torturer.
John Retallack Hannah and Hanna in Dreamland
John has written over twenty plays and adaptations for theatre and radio. Among other awards he has won three Theatrical Management Association/Society of West End Theatre Awards (TMA/SWET), two Herald Angel Awards and a Fringe First. He has written twelve original theatre plays that include Hannah and Hanna (2001), and Hannah and Hanna in Dreamland (2018), which had both national and British Council tours. John was the founding Artistic Director of Actors Touring Company, London (ATC), and of Company of Angels. He was also the Artistic Director of Oxford Stage Company where he directed a dozen Shakespeare productions to wide critical acclaim. John now runs the writing course, Oxford Playwriting.
Hannah and Hanna in Dreamland
Sixteen years have passed since Hannah, from Margate, and Hanna, a Kosovan refugee, first met, the only thing they initially had in common being their names and a love of pop music. Hanna is now back in Kosovo and Hannah is surfing Margate’s gentrification wave ‐ until a Syrian girl living in the Calais ‘Jungle’ brings them back together.
Emily Woof Rosebery Avenue
Emily has written for theatre and radio, including Pianoman, The Bigg Market, Babylove, Home to the Black Sea, as well as prize‐winning performance pieces Revolver, and SEX II and SEX III, commissioned by The Royal Court. Her two novels, The Whole Wide Beauty and The Lightning Tree, were both published by Faber. Emily is also an actor, writer and director. Her acting credits include The Full Monty, The Woodlanders, Velvet Goldmine, Finding Alice, and Mothering Sunday with Olivia Coleman and Colin Firth, which will be released in September 2021.
Rosebery Avenue
A dark comedy that asks morally complex questions about family, home and the nature of charity. Lockdown restrictions are easing, and a group of neighbours get together to make something good happen in the world. Their aim is to help refugees. But soon in‐fighting, misdirected passion, bitter power struggles as well as seriously bungled house refurbishments push them to the edge. Just how badly will people behave in order to do good?
Annie Fox Progress and Driverless
Annie's play Woman Caught Unaware was a Heretic Voices winner, produced at the Arcola Theatre and published by Nick Hern Books. Her play Driverless won the Little Wonder radio competition and was recorded in Paris. For the Space she wrote Progress for the Two Fest and So Much Stuff for the 2.0 Festival, the latter receiving an Online OnComm Commendation. Her short/festival-length plays have been performed in the UK, US and Canada, including at the Pleasance, London, and the Edmonton Festival. The film of her script Troll won People's Choice Film of the Fest at the FFTG Awards and Best Monologue at Paperscreenplay. Annie has been short- and longlisted for major prizes, including, in 2021, the shortlists for the Alpine Playwriting Prize and the Arch 468 Hope Prize.
Troll
She was always the 'perfect mother' - so why was she hiding under a bridge with a hammer? Ambitious, loving and a talented baker, Carol thinks she has the perfect recipe for her daughter's success until an unexpected knock at her door makes her confront her maternal aspirations and mistakes. A tragicomic tale of motherhood, ageing, and the five second rule.
Progress
A darkly funny play about the state of education and class privilege. When the head of the history department, Kate, hires a new teacher, everyone loves him ‐ so why does Toby make her so uncomfortable? Set in a struggling school, they battle each other as their classes hurtle towards their examinations. A series of rapid‐fire encounters trace the progress of their relationship over the course of an academic year.
Driverless
A lonely widow, Amelia Wilkins, is convinced by her daughter to try a new, specially programmed driverless car. Not wishing to miss her grandson’s birthday, she reluctantly agrees to what becomes a life‐changing journey. Why does the car know so much about her? And is that voice familiar? A poignant and funny play about love, memory and second chances.
Cressida Peever Footprint
Cressida is a writer for stage, screen, audio and immersive experiences. In 2018 she was selected for the BBC Writersroom Comedy Monologue workshops, and her script OFFS was deemed ‘far too good’ by EdFringe Review, and chosen as their critics’ pick. Her immersive productions, Divine Proportions and Red Palace, each ran for seventeen weeks at The Vaults, Waterloo, with the latter chosen by The Stage as one of their top shows of 2019. She is currently developing an online show for young people and a six-part TV comedy.
Footprint
A romantic thriller. Cammie and Jaz are eloping. They’re going to visit Jaz’s hometown before it falls into the sea. But when Cammie is held up at airport security for environmental offences, their love for each other is tested by their duty to the planet.
Janet Taylor Alterations and White
Janet’s first professional play was a short monologue that would have been performed at Cheltenham Everyman Theatre in May 2020 if Covid‐19 hadn’t prevented it. Alterations is her first full‐length play. Earlier drafts have been longlisted by Bristol Old Vic, Theatre 503, and the Papatango Playwriting Competition. White is Janet’s latest play, written as an exploration of white privilege and liberalism.
Alterations
A romantic comedy. Joe has cheated on Lily. Or has he? Lily has certainly cheated on Joe. But she doesn’t see it that way. When their younger selves step out of memory to hold them to account on their seventeenth wedding anniversary, Joe and Lily have some serious questions to answer. Alterations explores a marriage, where it went wrong, and whether it’s worth fighting for.
White
A satire on white privilege and liberal complacency. Cressida is determined to court controversy and hang a portrait, found in her parents’ attic, on the dining room wall. Seb thinks she’s being naive and that it should stay where it was found. Besides, they have friends coming for dinner.
Chris Salt Fell
Chris is a playwright, applied film and creative writing practitioner, and community artist. Until 2014 he balanced a career as a filmmaker with a wealth of non-broadcast work but since then has prioritised his writing, fed by other artistic engagements. He’s had work selected for Bolton Octagon’s Top Five Festival, come runner-up in both the Octagon and Papatango national new writing awards, had a professional commission for a portmanteau show with NTC (Northumberland Theatre Company), as well as Arts Council grants to research and develop his work. He was a founder member of the Royal Court (Northern) Writers’ Group, is co-director of Edgeways Productions, and is currently working with Hurricane Films on a screenplay, with funding from the BFI.
Fell
A laugh-out-loud, heart-warming and heart-breaking comedy drama about the forging of an unlikely friendship in the shadows of the high fells in Cumbria; an ode to adolescence, dead dogs and dead dads - under-scored by Elvis Costello.
Amanda Mackenzie Stuart Lizzie on the Fence
Amanda has written two plays since the start of the pandemic: Convulsion and Lizzie on the Fence. She is an associate of the John Retallack Writers’ Workshop for emerging playwrights. A graduate of the National Film and Television School, she worked for years in the British film industry before surprising herself by becoming a writer of non-fiction and publishing two biographies: Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt and Diana Vreeland, Empress of Fashion, both with HarperCollins. She is equally surprised to find herself drawing on her own life with Lizzie on the Fence.
Lizzie On The Fence
A tragicomic pandemic love story. Badly-behaved Lizzie is desperate to be reunited with Bill, her husband of forty years. But he’s in a care home and, thanks to Covid and ‘government guidance’, he’s stuck on the other side of a security fence. So what’s Lizzie going to do about it, and how far is she prepared to go?
Imogen Usherwood Meeting Point
When she was still an undergraduate at Durham University, Imogen’s first play, Number Theory, was presented in the Tristan Bates Theatre and shortlisted for Best Writing at the Durham Drama Festival 2020. Meeting Point was performed in the Assembly Rooms Theatre and was shortlisted for student awards, including Best Writing and Best Show. Imogen also directed and produced shows at Durham including a national tour of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, and - despite her youth - won the University's prize for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre. She has also written features for Mslexia, Ed Fringe Review, and Noises Off (the National Student Drama Festival), among others. Imogen graduated in 2021 with a First in English Literature.
Meeting Point
A romantic drama. Sadie is cynical, grieving and a compulsive liar. Matt is polite, into poetry, and terrified of relationships. They meet on Tinder, and agree to go on a date - and a few more. But they’re both keeping secrets from each another, and one day Matt discovers something that makes him question their entire relationship. Meeting Point is about love, loss and lemon drizzle cake, navigating relationships in the digital age, and the things that go unsaid.