2020 Stories Part Two

Hannah Lavery is a poet and playwright. She is an experienced workshop facilitator, mentor and former secondary English Teacher.
Her poetry pamphlet, Finding Seaglass: Poems from The Drift was published by Stewed Rhubarb Press (May 2019) and her poem, Scotland You’re No Mine was selected as one the best Scottish poems for 2019. The Drift, her autobiographical play, was produced by the National Theatre of Scotland for a nationwide tour in 2019. She was also awarded a New Playwright Award from Playwrights Studio Scotland and was named as one of BBC Writers Room Scottish Voices of 2020.

In May 2020 she was selected as one of Owen Sheer’s Ten Writers Asking Questions That Will Shape Our Future For The International Literature Showcase, a project from the National Writing Centre and the British Council and she is one of Imaginate’s Accelerator Artists and an Associate Artist with the National Theatre of Scotland.

Her most recent play The Lament for Sheku Bayoh is being produced by The National Theatre of Scotland, Lyceum Theatre and Edinburgh International Festival for a live stream from the Lyceum Theatre in November 2020 in which Hannah will also direct.

www.hannahlavery.com
 

Leyla Josephine is a writer/director/performer from Glasgow, now residing in Prestwick. She comes from a background of theatre and is a well-known performance poet. She was named in The List’s Top 100 Artists To Watch in 2019.

Her solo theatre shows Hopeless and Daddy Drag have taken the UK by storm with sold out shows across the country. Hopeless was runner up for Saboteur’s Best Spoken Word Show 2018. Daddy Drag won the Autopsy Award 2019 which celebrates artists making ground-breaking work in Scotland. It was also shortlisted for Filipa Braganca Award 2019, which honours solo female artists creating important work at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In 2014 she won the UK National Spoken Word Slam Championship at Royal Albert Hall. She  has been featured in The National, The Scotsman, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Upworthy, BBC Scotland, BBC Radio 4, BBC Social and Gutter magazine.

Leyla was selected for the Scottish Film Talent Network’s Write4Film 2018, for the New Talent Shorts 2019. She is currently preproduction with her short Groom supported by Short Circuit, funded by BFI Network and Screen Scotland. She is currently developing short Dinghied which is funded by Creative Scotland’s Open Fund. She took part in a prewriting course for her first feature with Le Groupe Ouest supported by Screen Scotland.

Leyla has extensive experience as a facilitator and project leader working in lots of different social contexts creating poetry and theatre with participants. She is currently the Schools Writer in Residence for Edinburgh International Book Festival.  She loves stories, wine, abba and chatting to her house plants.

www.leylajosephine.co.uk
 

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Lewis Hetherington is an award winning playwright and performance maker. His work is rooted in collaboration and storytelling.

He is currently Creative Lead for The Coming Back Out Ball for the National Theatre of Scotland; an international projecting celebrating the stories of LGTBI+ Elders. Recently he was the 2019 IASH Creative Fellow for the University of Edinburgh and the Traverse Theatre, Embedded Artist for Creative Carbon Scotland, and an Associate of Playwrights’ Studio Scotland.

Recent credits include Rocket Post! (National Theatre of Scotland), BOYS (The Pappy Show), How To Fix a Broken Wing (Catherine Wheels), and Cèilidh (Theatre Gu Leòr).

As an associate of Analogue he won two Fringe Firsts and the Arches Brick Award for his work on Mile End, Beachy Head, 2401 Objects (with Oldenburg Staatstheater) and Stowaway. Other credits include two collaborations with Ailie Cohen Puppet Maker, The Secret Life of Suitcases (Unicorn) and Cloud Man, as well as Friends Electric (Visible Fictions) Leaving Planet Earth (Grid Iron/EIF) Instructions for Butterfly Collectors, A Perfect Child and Sea Change (Oran Mor). 

His work has toured extensively throughout Scotland the rest of the world including performances in Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and the USA.
 

Raman Mundair is an Indian born writer, artist, playwright and filmmaker. She identifies as a Queer, disabled, working class, British Asian intersectional feminist, and is an activist based in Shetland and Glasgow. She is the award winning author of Lovers, Liars, Conjurers and Thieves, A Choreographer’s Cartography, The Algebra of Freedom (a play) and is the editor of Incoming: Some Shetland Voices. Raman won an ALL3Media Scholarship award and is a graduate of National Film and Television School. She was shortlisted as a writer and director for Sharp Shorts. Her new experimental film, Choreographies of Resist///dance were commissioned by Glasgow Tramway and shown on #TramwayTV. 

As an activist she has worked on a grass roots level against anti racism, anti fascism, state violence, No Borders, and against gender based, domestic and sexual violence.

Her work is socially and politically observant, bold, mischievous, cutting edge and potent with poetic imagery and integrity. Her writing plays with the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and class and challenges notions of British and colonial histories and identities. Raman's work focuses on the experiences, knowledges and life-worlds of people of colour and reframes their experience from a fresh, new perspective. She has published poetry, fiction, drama and non-fiction and has performed and exhibited her artwork around the world from Aberdeen to Zimbabwe. She presents the Intersectional Voices (IV) podcast.

https://rmundair.wixsite.com/website
 

Martin O'Connor is a performer, poet and theatre maker from Glasgow. He works primarily in verbatim and biographical writing, participation and spoken word. His recent solo work includes The Mark of the Beast (Platform), Togail Nàisean / Building a Nation (Glasgow Life), and Theology (The Arches).

Martin is the current Writer in Residence with National Theatre of Scotland, developing new work in Gaelic, Scots and British Sign Language. He was the recipient of the 2018 Dr Gavin Wallace Fellowship hosted by Playwright’s Studio Scotland in partnership with the Royal Lyceum Theatre, which culminated in a sharing of new work Through the Shortbread Tin: An Ossianic Journey.

Martin is the director of Tron Theatre Young Company, and Creative Writer at Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice. He was also the first Writer in Residence with Children's Hospices Across Scotland.

Other writing and directing credits include Twelve (Platform), Angry Young Men (Glass Performance), Turntable (with MJ McCarthy and Red Bridge Arts), editor of the book for An Audience With...(Janice Parker Projects), Submarine Time Machine (National Theatre of Scotland), Come To Where I'm From (Paines Plough), A Little Life (Tron Theatre Mayfesto), The Pokey Hat (Grinagaog/Culture 2014), Ch Ch Changes, Playing Houses, (Glasgay), Platypus in Boots, Pop-Up Theatre Royal, Alexander McCall Smith's Anamchara: Songs of Friendship (Scottish Opera).

www.martinoconnor.info