I occasionally write scripts for plays.
In August 2017, my short play Pity Party was performed by the National University Theatre Society in Canberra, Australia. The play was an affectionate satire of hipster culture in which a piece of modern art – a humble orange peel – is inexplicably mistaken for trash and swept up by a part-time cleaning lady. Can the “citrus opus” ever be replaced? Chaos ensues.
In May 2022, my full-length play An Open Book ran for five nights in Cambridge, UK, at the Corpus Playroom. The production was funded by St John’s College’s theatre society The Lady Margaret Players – which was especially fitting and delightful given An Open Book is in fact a gentle comedy about fictitious academics at St John’s College.
The play’s blurb is as follows:
“Professor Ernest Gray stands for academic rigour, discipline, and truth. He avoids frays on Twitter. His moral backbone is widely considered to be as inflexible as a punting pole. Yet when a St John’s College librarian – half-mad with dreams of power, conquest, and chapel-to-library conversion schemes – uncovers scandalous relics from his wild youth as a Master’s student, Ernest is forced into quandary. Does he bend to blackmail to save his reputation and his (almost-existent) love life? Or does he dare to be an open book?”
A local paper described the play as “a sparkling gem of a play” and “metatheatre at its finest”. You can also read (for fun!) my own tongue-in-cheek review of the play here. A cast member and I also were also interviewed about the play by Tony Barnfield on Cambridge 105 Radio.
The script for An Open Book has since been added to the British Library’s Modern Playscripts collection.
