Theatre Director
DYCP Example of Work
TEENAGE DICK by Mike Lew
Donmar Warehouse Schools Tour
Richard III is reimagined as a high-school drama in this smart, probing play ★★★★ TimeOut
As winter formal gives way to glorious spring fling, Richard, the class loser, lusts for power at Roseland High. After years of torment due to his hemiplegia, Richard plots the ultimate rise in power: to become president of his senior class. But like all teenagers, and all despots, he is faced with the hardest question of all: is it better to be loved, or feared?
WORK BITCH by Jessica Siân
VAULT Festival
The final scene of Work Bitch is one I couldn't look away from. It is a moment where Blythe Stewart's direction and Siân's words weave together seamlessly and I'm holding my breath thinking back on it now. ★★★★ A Younger Theatre
A demure attitude and pleasant manners hide a deep sadness that the character can't shake nor show publicly...Directed by Blythe Stewart, she stands in front of endless orders organised quite messily on the racks. Siân is subtly funny, finding humour in the tragic happenings in every server's work-life. ★★★★ Broadway World
Waitress never thought she'd end up here, 32, clearing plates, taking orders. How did she get here? And what if this is it?
A story of pulling pints and sweeping floors - from a Saturday job refilling coffee cups in South Africa's young rainbow-nation to a curry house in Camberwell nearly two decades later, Work Bitch follows Waitress through a life well worked. The lovers, the friends, the adopted families and the terrible tips that made her.
SKIN A CAT by Isley Lynn
The Bunker & UK Tour (incl. Edinburgh Fringe, Lowry, Stephen Joseph)
Masterfully done…Skin a Cat is a quiet revelation…a glorious, hopeful and eye-opening experience ★★★★ The List
Beyond its silly and plentiful humour is a genuinely moving and effortlessly charming production … It’s born out in Stewart's intelligent direction. ★★★★ TimeOut
Stewart’s production is a stylish, sympathetic staging of some seriously important new writing ★★★★★ A Younger Theatre
Every teenager thinks they're the only one not having sex. But for Alana, it may well be true. She's not frigid. She really isn't. But every time she gets close to doing it something just seems to get in the way... Soon she can't help wondering: Is it this tricky for everyone else? Because no one ever said it was going to be this complicated.
With a kaleidoscope of off-kilter characters, Skin A Cat follows Alana on an awkward sexual odyssey: from getting her first period at nine years old and freaking out her frantic mother, to watching bad porn at a house party with her best friend's boyfriend, to a painful examination by an overly cheery gynaecologist - all in the pursuit of losing her virginity and finally becoming a woman. Whatever that means...
THE MOOR by Catherine Lucie
Old Red Lion Theatre
An almost perfect piece of theatre ★★★★ Everything Theatre / Packs a twist that’ll satisfy ★★★★★ Miro Magazine
Brilliantly written and thrillingly staged ★★★★ Love London Love Culture
Beautifully crafted into a truly breathing and living world ★★★★★ Theatre Box
Bronagh has lived right at the heart of the moor for as long as she can remember. But recently she has started having the same dream over and over again - with the voices and the whispering. Is it trying to tell her something?
When a boy vanishes, Bronagh has to tell someone what she suspects, entangling herself and her boyfriend in a murder investigation. But how can anyone find the truth when the ground keeps shifting?
The Moor is a tense psychological thriller, part domestic tale, part folk tale, that pits Bronagh against her own past and present, dragging her, her baby daughter and those closest to them into something deeper than the marsh on the moor.
HOW TO HOLD YOUR BREATH by Zinnie Harris
London Academy of Music & Dramatic Arts (LAMDA)
Because we live in Europe. Because nothing really bad happens. The worst is a bit of an inconvenience. Perhaps not such a good mini break. But really in the grand scheme of life, not so bad.
Starting with a seemingly innocent one night stand, this dark, witty and magical play by Zinnie Harris dives into our recent European history.
Drama School Productions:
BE MY BABY by Amanda Whittington @ London Academy of Music & Dramatic Arts (LAMDA)
What else can you offer your child, Mary? A Christian home? Financial security? A legitimate name?
The swinging sixties haven’t quite reached St Saviour’s mother and baby home. Run by the Church of England, the unwed mothers are hidden away from the neighbours and cloaked in shame.
They’re told this is what’s best. They have lives to go back to. Loving families. Boyfriends who are definitely going to marry them as soon as they can. And the children will be taken well care of. They’ve been promised that. But the young women aren’t so sure anymore...
CONDITIONALLY by Danusia Samal @ Soho Theatre, with Oxford School of Drama
It’s always a transaction, isn’t it? In the end. "I'll love you if you're patient, I'll love you if you're strong, I'll love you so long as you love me back.
In a small patch of a sprawling city families, lovers, strangers and friends test the limits of their relationships. What happens when someone declares their love, but we see it, feel it, differently? In the give and take, what gets left behind?
IF AND WHEN by Matilda Ibini, Isley Lynn, Iskandar Sharazuddin @ Soho Theatre, with Oxford School of Drama
Every single person in the country. People will disintegrate. People will be hurt. But the vast majority of people will survive and unless they get themselves very far away they will be radioactive. And they will need care. And I can do that.
Something terrible is about to happen. Any moment now. So what do you do? In a world of hard stances, snap elections, and political leaders playing schoolyard bullies, the countdown has started
A new play which brings a responsive, imaginative and exacting look at the lines we draw and the sides we choose when a finger hovers over the reset button.
CORRESPONDENCE by Lucinda Burnett
Old Red Lion
Spring 2011. Kate and Wills tie the knot whilst Syrian teenagers are tortured for anti-government graffiti. Ben is 16, and his only friends have disappeared from Xbox Live. He thinks they're mixed up in the protests in Syria - and he'll risk everything on a journey to find out the truth. What happens when a teenager from Stockport tries to stop the world exploding? A bittersweet coming-of-age story about fledgling friendships, mental health and a Syrian rescue mission.
EAST OF BERLIN by Hannah Moscovitch
Southwark Playhouse
Intense and sharply witty ★★★★ The Stage
Dark, tragic, thought provoking ★★★★ The Upcoming
Stewart has found the beauty in the piece’s intensity and subtlety – she directs with a gentle hand allowing it a sense of delicate, clear emotion, which has a very young but surprisingly rooted and almost wise feel to it. A Younger Theatre
Moscovitch and Stewart are to be congratulated for providing a thoughtful exploration of a sensitive aspect of recent history ★★★★ WhatsOnStage
Immensely thought-provoking and incredibly intense, Moscovitch's outstanding writing is supported by a supreme production and extraordinary cast. Uncomfortable and subtly shocking it's an extreme yet elating piece of theatre ★★★★★ Grumpy Gay Critic
Standing outside his father’s study in Paraguay, Rudi is smoking cigarettes. It has been seven years since he left his family and their history behind him.
As a teenager Rudi grew up blissfully unaware his father was a Nazi SS doctor at Auschwitz. When a friend reveals the truth, Rudi flees to Berlin to invent a new life. In the archives of a library he meets Sarah, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Rudi’s path to redemption blurs as the past catches up with him and he is forced to confront his father and their history.
VELOCITY by Daniel MacDonald
Finborough Theatre
Top-notch performances under Blythe Stewart's assured direction. An intelligent, clever and relevant piece of modern theatre. More from Daniel Macdonald, please. ★★★★ WhatsOnStage
Detailed direction by Blythe Stewart gives us moments through a phsyical score... Velocity is an intricate & innovative high that theatre-goers should definitely experience - a fresh breath of air ★★★★ A Younger Theatre
Pockets of black, chaotic wit… a novel, visually and conceptually imaginative take on teenage self-absorption and insecurity. Exeunt
Dot doesn't hate her father, she just wants to explode him out of his office tower to shake things up. Set him off. See what happens. And get an 'A' on her science project.
Daring to challenge the law of physic, Dot interviews her flailing father and neurotic mother as their world crashes to the ground. Just imagine. Your life in six seconds.