There are three aspects to my work: drama for school students, more general creative projects with primary and secondary students, and drama for adult audiences.
Many of my plays are site-specific: written especially for the place where they are performed.
I believe in presenting theatre as informally as possible. So my work is often promenade in style, with the audience following the action around the building as it is staged.
I have written for specific audiences, such as different age groups of children or teenagers; or elderly adults. I can also produce work which meets the curriculum needs of a specific Key Stage.
Bringing history to life is one of my specialisms, in my writing both for school and adult audiences.
For example, I was commissioned to write two plays for the opening of the newly-restored Billiard Room at Bantock House Museum. Civic Pride, set in the 1890s, is a play for adults which features a gathering of the captains of industry from Victorian Wolverhampton. The Man from the Works, for school visits, features the bitter tinplate workers strike of 1850.
Civic Pride is a promenade performance, so the audiences moved around the museum, visiting the beautiful drawing room, lobby and broad stairs of the museum – the former home of Baldwin Bantock, who appeared as a character in both the plays.
I have research experience and qualifications in history, including a Ph.D. from Birmingham University in the history of the Black Country. I am able to use this to take on briefs for writing plays which use historical buildings, including schools, writing about people who lived there and the events they experienced.
I am a qualified teacher, with experience of working with primary and secondary pupils, and with F.E. students, including adults.
Click here for a listing of my plays which have been performed.
As well as drama, I also write prose.
My journalism has included articles published in the Times Educational Supplement and the Express and Star and its associated journals, Wolverhampton Magazine and Staffordshire Magazine
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