Writing for Performance, BA

Beth Calvert-Lee

Instagram: @bethcalvertlee, @intellectualramblings

Twitter: @bethcalvertlee

Beth is a playwright, poet and actress. Her writing often takes place in London and celebrates female voices. Her special interest is in creating work for solo-performance from auto-biographical writing. As a writer, Beth recognises the importance of interrogating her work. She wants to hear from everyone involved in the production of her performances; her background in acting means she particularly values the relationship actors have with writing.

Beth studied Musical Theatre at the Brit School where she learnt the value of ‘play’ in performance and joy in writing. She then graduated from the Arts Ed Acting Foundation course where she discovered the importance of dramaturgy in performance. Beth is a graduate of The Orange Tree Theatre Young Company and a member of the National Youth theatre. She is proud of having a strong network of creatives across the country.

Beth’s most recent play The Flaw is Yours investigates the vibrant lives of two young women living in a London council block that burns down. Going forward she plans to develop the piece into a full-length play. Beth’s piece The Intellectual Ramblings of a Mad Woman (who isn’t mad) will be shown this August at The Hope Theatre as part of the Camden Fringe. 

Fannie Cole

Instagram: @fannie__marion
Website: fanniemarion.carrd.co

Fannie is an autistic playwright, performer and dramaturg. She likes writing funny plays about unfunny situations. Fannie is interested in work that centres on feminism, women’s history, how generational trauma affects women’s mental health. Recently, Fannie has had her work showcased in new writing nights in many theatres, including The Cockpit Theatre and with National Youth Theatre. She is also currently participating in Soho Writers Lab (receiving the Matilda Ibini Bursary) writing a satirical one woman show about sexism in classic literature. During her writer’s residency at The National Archives, she wrote a play following the real lives of arsonist, pyromaniac, lesbian suffragettes. She trained in acting at Rose Bruford College. 

Having lived experience of mental health institutions, she wishes to create theatre that questions human behaviour and normalises insanity. Within her work, she wishes to challenge the relationship between the audience, the actor and the playwright and explores how these boundaries affect us. She works for the Disabled Artist Network Community and Changeling Children Theatre to increase accessibility and representation of disabled and mentally ill artists in the theatre industry. She has worked as an access consultant on various projects and knows three languages, including British Sign Language.

Audrey CsNagy

Instagram: @ch.eekie

Twitter: @feralbabey

Audrey CsNagy is a Hungarian writer originally trained as a classical dramaturg. She enjoys playing with audience expectation, poking holes in the fourth wall, and specialises in writing in verse. During her course she wrote the play MATER NOSTER, a one-woman show about a woman who grew up in a cult. She completed her placement at the Young Vic Theatre’s Taking Part Department and has facilitated an outreach project in Johannesburg, South Africa in co-production with the Market Theatre’s youth company as well as the Lefika La Phodiso art counselling organisation. Prior to her studies she was the dramaturg of the show Orgia with the company R-Konvoj, in Budapest, which had a run of three years.

Audrey is especially excited about playing with language and exploring the boundaries of it. She speaks several languages in varying levels of fluency and is always looking for new challenges.

Beth Ellery

Instagram: @beth.ellery

Twitter: @bethellery_

Beth is a Cornish writer who aims to demonstrate the transformative potential of comedy. Whether it’s through satirical sketches, witty observations, or clever wordplay, Beth seeks to show that comedy can engage, educate, and inspire, leading to shifts in perspective and behaviour. Having had experience working in the arts community in Cornwall, London and more recently South Africa, Beth looks for the essence of the mundane and relatable. She recognises that even the simplest situations can be a source of comedic material. By adding these mundane elements to her creative twists, she crafts work that sometimes appears absurd or random.

She is currently writing short films with friends and collaborators, furthering and enriching her writing experience as she continues to work on projects for TV.

Claudia Fielding

Website: claudiafielding.com

Instagram: @claudfandango

Claudia is a keen writer of dark comedy and tragicomedy, from monologues and sketches to full length plays. Her writing includes themes of the hypothetical, dystopia, politics, and forms of crisis ,and finding the funny in all that. Her plays are mainly set in London, with which she has a love/hate relationship. Her first play Tea Leaves debuted at The Courtyard in 2022 and was shortlisted for Masterclass’ Pitch Your Play Competition, as well as being in the top 20% of entrants for the Verity Bargate award out of 1300 applicants. Tea Leaves was shortlisted in the top 30 out of 250 applicants in the Breakthrough: Writers in Residence with Traverse Theatre. Her work has also been seen at The Arcola and The Hackney Den. She was commissioned by Theatre of Debate to write a thirty-minute play for young people about vaccine hesitancy. She recently completed her second full length play, titled Film: Don’t Recycle.

Anna Rastelli

Twitter: @annarastelli8

Anna is a Queer and neurodivergent writer, director, dramaturg, and composer, and is particularly interested in projects that centre identity and accessibility. She is currently adapting a seminal novel from the lesbian literary canon into a musical and developing several monologues into full-length plays. In 2023, an extract of Anna’s new play PIZZAIOLA PARTY was performed at Theatre503’s Rapid Write Response night. She performed her spoken-word stand-up piece In Distress in the 2022 Write Here Write Now evening at the Cavendish Arms, and again at Early Dawn, a new writing night with Cracking Slate at the Golden Goose Theatre. Anna assistant directed an adaptation of Electra, and co-founded and programmed SU Fest, both at RCSSD. She also directed a rehearsed reading of Tea Leaves, a new play by Claudia Fielding, at the Courtyard Theatre.

Nell Rayner

Instagram: @nell.rayner, @strangers__play__

Twitter: @nell_rayner

Nell Rayner is a queer writer and theatre maker based in London. She enjoys experimenting with different styles and themes, but mainly focuses on creating politically-charged theatre, as well as using spoken word in her work. Nell has performed her own work as part of scratch nights (Salt Circle Productions, 2022), and has had her work performed by others in new writing nights and festivals (Bomb Factory, 2023; Act II Festival, 2023). Recently, Nell has worked as the Assistant Director on the new comedy play How to Kill Foxes by Rex Fisher at The Drayton Arms Theatre. She is currently self-producing her debut play Strangers, which will run at The Lion and Unicorn Theatre at the end of June. Nell was a writer in residence at Jacksons Lane last year, and has experience facilitating theatre workshops for young people in and around London. She will also be heading up to the Edinburgh Fringe this year as part of the EdFringe Review team.

Summer Rowley-Kirby

Instagram: @summer_rk

Twitter: @SumRowKirb

Summer Rowley-Kirby is a queer writer and creative based in London and Essex who specialises in spoken word. Summer has been a part of the industry from a young age, performing with The Pauline Quirk Academy in London’s West End, where she trained for five years. Summer began writing at sixteen when she performed a range of spoken word pieces with Old Trunk Theatre Company at Chalkwell’s Metal, whilst continuing her studies in the performing arts. Whilst at Central, Summer has explored her writing style by focusing her plays on themes of grief, loss and dystopian worlds. Seeking to destroy taboos, Summer’s most recent work includes Here Lie the Bodies, a spoken word piece on her experience with grief after losing her parents, and her play BIMBO. It follows the story of a young girl who is finding her way in London whilst fighting the stereotypes of being an ‘Essex girl’.

Xanthe Summerfield

Instagram: @xansummerfield

YouTube: www.youtube.com/@bigwords1000

Xanthe is a Zimbabwean-born, London-raised writer, actor, presenter and comedian. In 2018, she co-wrote, directed and played the leading role in a show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Xanthe has written a variety of pieces over the last three years, from psychological thrillers to satirical skits, reflecting her skill and enthusiasm for dark humour. Xanthe is interested in writing and performing (including her own work) for stage, screen and radio. She has a YouTube channel, making witty explanatory videos on a variety of topics. She has contributed to a short film commissioned by the Tate Modern, and another for the International Film and Television School of Paris. She recently completed a residency at Surgeons’ Hall Museums in Edinburgh and is working on a comic piece on early medicine. She frequently works as a pundit, commenting on issues relating to Gen Z on both Times Radio and Monocle Radio.

Indra Țincoca

Instagram: @_prophet60091

Indra’s writing is largely concerned with exploring unconventional practises of writing. You will often find fleeting and fragmented words and phrases, written largely in ekphrasis, in both Romanian and English. Her writing does not pertain to a specific form and aims to dissolve conventions surrounding prose, poetry and playwriting. Ce mundro o miro is a play written at iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) where she undertook her writing-in-residence. She will start her MA in Writing at the Royal College of Art in September.

Conall Wilson

Instagram: @wconall

Conall is a London-Irish playwright, writer and filmmaker. He has an avid commitment to writing unconventional theatre. Over the past three years his interest for in-yer face theatre has grown; Sarah Kane & David Ireland are some of his favourite writers. Conall’s writing explore sthemes of mental health, violence, psychology and society. His most recent play Identity explores the history of The Troubles and the future of Northern Ireland in the 21st Century. Conall worked in residence at The Museum of Home as an Assistant Producer where he wrote Provoke, a short play that portrays the mental and psychological damage experienced in the life of a hoarder. During his studies at Central, Conall showcased two of his short plays, Sell your Sole and A Bad Day, and will debut his short play Provoke at the Etcetera Theatre in June.