Stef Smith – författare

Five exciting new plays for young people written specifically in response to a world in the midst of a pandemic, accompanied by a handbook from Wonder Fools theatre company with guidance for staging the plays either online or live in the space.Commissioned as part of Wonder Fools' national participatory project Positive Stories for Negative Times, these five plays offer a variety of stories, styles and forms for ages 8-25. These original and innovative plays are:Is This A Fairytale? by Bea WebsaterA new play that rips apart the traditional fairy tale canon and turns it on its head in a surprising, inventive and unconventional way. Ages 8+Hold Out Your Hand by Chris ThorpeA dynamic text asking questions about place, where we are now and the moment we are living through. Ages 13+The Pack by Stef SmithA playful and poetic exploration about getting lost in the loneliness of your living room and trying to find your way home. Ages 13+Ozymandias by Robbie Gordon and Jack NurseA contemporary story inspired by Percy Shelley’s 19th century poem of the same name, exploring power, oppression and racism through the eyes of young people. Ages 16+Bad Bored Women of the Rooms by Sabrina MahfouzA storytelling adventure through the centuries of women and girls who have spent a lot of time stuck in a room. Ages 18+The accompanying handbook includes step-by-step guidance on how to produce the plays either online or live in the space, and bespoke exercises and instructions on how to approach directing each play.

It is the scale and range of creative collaboration inherent in theatre that sits at the very heart of National Theatre Connections.National Theatre Connections 2022 draws together ten new plays for young people to perform, from some of the UK's most exciting playwrights. These are plays for a generation of theatre-makers who want to ask questions, challenge assertions and test the boundaries, and for those who love to invent and imagine a world of possibilities.The plays offer young performers an engaging and diverse range of material to perform, read or study.This 2022 anthology represents the full set of ten plays offered by the National Theatre 2022 Festival, as well as comprehensive workshop notes that give insights and inspiration for building characters, running rehearsals and staging a production.

A young woman finds herself washed up back home on the Scottish archipelago of Orkney, trying to rebuild her life after a decade of addiction.The life she has left behind in London, with all its intoxicating temptations, has pushed her to the point of destruction. Now there is wildness of a different form – an alluring wilderness that she must learn to navigate.Speaking to the impact of isolation and loneliness and – ultimately – the resilience of people, Amy Liptrot's bestselling memoir The Outrun has been adapted for the stage by Stef Smith. Directed by Vicky Featherstone, and co-produced by The Royal Lyceum Edinburgh and Edinburgh International Festival, it premiered at the 2024 Festival.Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun was a Sunday Times bestseller, BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, won the Wainwright Prize and the PEN Ackerley Prize, and was shortlisted for the Wellcome and Ondaatje Prizes.'One of Scotland's boldest chroniclers of contemporary women's lives' The Stage on Stef Smith'A lyrical, brave memoir… compelling' Guardian on The Outrun

Antler steps out of her front door and throws her phone to the ground. She stamps on it. Then she climbs the tallest tree in the park. She doesn't want to be found, not by anyone.Over the course of one autumnal evening, seven teenagers' lives intertwine as they make their way through the park. And everything that seemed normal becomes extraordinary.A play about protest, power and protecting yourself, Stef Smith's Remote was commissioned as part of the 2015 National Theatre Connections Festival and proved enormously popular with youth theatres and college companies across the UK, returning for the 2023 Connections Festival.

‘Who said smashing things up was a bad thing?’Three strangers are about to face their demons head on. Balanced precariously on the tipping point, they might just be able to save one another – if they can only overcome their urge to self-destruct.Passionate, painful and playful, Stef Smith’s Swallow takes a long, hard look at the extremes of everyday life. The play premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it received a Scotsman Fringe First Award. It was directed by Traverse Artistic Director Orla O’Loughlin, and featured original music by LAWholt.

In the overcrowded city, nature is getting out of control. The mice are scratching between walls, the pigeons are diseased and the foxes are beginning to rule the streets. The problem is growing. It's contagious. It has to be stopped, before it's too late.Stef Smith's play Human Animals premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in May 2016, in a production directed by Hamish Pirie.

'Do you want to live forever?YES or NO.'Polly and Owen have nailed it. Successful in their careers and wildly in love with each other, they feel ready to take on the world.But when a mysterious new technology, promising a break from the daily grind, creeps into everyone's phones, their world is turned upside down. As the line between physical and digital rapidly dissipates, Polly and Owen are forced to question whether their definitions of reality and freedom are the same.Girl in the Machine is a disturbing but compassionate vision of our potential digital future, and what it might mean for 'life' as we know it. The play premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in 2017, directed by Traverse Artistic Director Orla O'Loughlin.

‘When I walk into a room, in my uniform. There is a look that gets thrown my way. When I walk into a room, in my uniform. It’s as if for second everything stops.’Jane and Toni are immaculate, iconic, accommodating flight attendants. They're here for your safety, your comfort and your pleasure. Or so you think. But 30,000 feet below them their seemingly perfect lives are rapidly unravelling.In the sky, over the sea and in cheap hotel rooms around the world, they can feel the ground shake beneath them. Something is rising up, something which cannot be ignored. And it's calling out for them. If they're going to survive what's coming, something needs to change.Poetic, unpredictable and explosive, Stef Smith's play Enough is a fragmentary and intense journey into female friendship, and unearths what happens when you can no longer be the woman people want.Enough premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, winning a Fringe First Award.

‘You’ve lies in the whites of your eyes, Nora. What have you done…?’Nora is the perfect wife and mother. She is dutiful, beautiful and everything is always in its right place. But when a secret from her past comes back to haunt her, her life rapidly unravels. Over the course of three days, Nora must fight to protect herself and her family or risk losing everything.Henrik Ibsen's brutal portrayal of womanhood caused outrage when it was first performed in 1879. This bold new version by Stef Smith reframes the drama in three different time periods. The fight for women's suffrage, the Swinging Sixties and the modern day intertwine in this urgent, poetic play that asks how far have we really come in the past hundred years?Nora : A Doll's House was first produced by the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, in 2019, at Tramway, Glasgow. A new production opened at the Young Vic, London, in February 2020.It was a finalist for the 2020 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to celebrate women who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre.

Winner of the 2012 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievment In An Affiliate Theatre.A world away from you, but a world right on your doorstep.A powerful story of the terrifying complexities of sex trafficking today based on real experiences. Moving away from generalised narrative accounts of trafficked women, this explosive, site-specific production combines direct, chilling performances with video and animation. RoadKill exposes the brutal and hidden truth behind the newspaper headlines as audiences share in the intimate, harrowing details of a young woman trapped in a living nightmare.