Positive Stories For Negative Times

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 Websater A 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 Thorpe A dynamic text asking questions about place, where we are now and the moment we are living through. Ages 13+ The Pack by Stef Smith A 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 Nurse A 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 Mahfouz A 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.

Sabrina Mahfouz has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and is the recipient of the 2018 King's Alumni Arts & Culture Award. She has won a Sky Arts Academy Award for Poetry, a Westminster Prize for New Playwrights and a Fringe First Award for her play Chef. Her play With a Little Bit of Luck won the 2019 Best Drama Production at the BBC Radio & Music Awards. She also writes for children and her play Zeraffa Giraffa won a 2018 Off West End Award.

Sabrina is the editor of The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, a 2017 Guardian Book of the Year and the forthcoming Smashing It: Working Class Artists on Life, Art and Making It Happen. She's an essay contributor to the multi-award-winning The Good Immigrant and is currently writing a biopic of the rapper and producer Wiley, for Pulse Films.

Originally from a small village near Stirling in Scotland, Stef Smith studied Drama and Theatre Arts (with a specialism in directing) at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. Stef has worked as both an individual artist and with other theatre makers. Her work is predominately political seeking to unearth unheard stories and it always aims to examine both the lightness and darkness of life. Stef loves traveling and in the past few years she has visited Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Korea, Mexico, Turkey and the USA for her work. Stef has also led creative writing groups for young people in India, ran writing workshops in Brazil and given lectures at Glasgow University.

Most notably in 2012 Stef won an Olivier for the show RoadKill. In 2013 she was invited for a residency to the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. She also appeared on The Lists Top 100 Cutural Contributors for 2015 and was named by the Independent as a part of a 'new generation of British playwrights who will dominate 2017'. She is also an Associate Artist at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and at Leeds Playhouse. In 2020, she was a finalist for the world's biggest prize for female playwrights.

Chris Thorpe is a writer and performer from Manchester, where he has an ongoing association with the Royal Exchange Theatre – work for them includes There Has Possibly Been An Incident and The Mysteries. Other theatre work includes Victory Condition and The Milk of Human Kindness for the Royal Court, Chorus for the Gate Theatre and Hannah, Beowulf and one of Aesop's Fables for the Unicorn. He also has ongoing collaborations with Rachel Chavkin produced by China Plate (Confrmation/Status), Lucy Ellinson (TORYCORE), Portugal's malavoadora (Overdrama/House-Garden/Dead End/Your Best Guess) and Hannah Jane Walker (The Oh Fuck Moment/I Wish I Was Lonely) Chris was a founder member of Unlimited Theatre, is an Associate of Live Art/Theatre company Third Angel and has worked frequently with Forest Fringe. Chris also collaborates with Rachel Bagshaw, writing the award-winning The Shape of the Pain, recently adapted for BBC as Where I Go (When I Can't Be Where I Am). He has also worked as a translator, most frequently with Serbian playwright Ugljesa Sajtinac and Belarus Free Theatre. His short film for the Royal Court and the Financial Times about the climate crisis, What Do You Want Me To Say? was released in September 2019.

Current work includes the Methuen Climate Commission for the Royal Court, Dying for mala voadora and the National Theatre of Portugal, Tell Me, for HOME Manchester, co-written with Yusra Warsama, a new piece for Nationaltheater Mannheim in collaboration with Javaad Alipoor, Hold Out Your Hand, a play for young performers produced by Scottish company Wonder Fools and the Traverse Theatre, and A Family Business, his next collaboration with Rachel Chavkin. He also works closely with the National Student Drama Festival.

Bea Webster trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (BA performance in British Sign Language and English). Writing credits include: Staging Our Futures Project (Little Cog Theatre), Squeezy Yoghurt (National Theatre of Scotland's Scenes for Survival). Bea's poem Long Lost Lover was published in both BSL and English. She also wrote and performed on BBC Social's How Not To Be D*cks To Deaf People. She was one of Playwright Studio Scotland's mentored playwrights for 2020.

Jack Nurse is one of the co-founders of Wonder Fools, a theatre company that creates contemporary new work based on a diverse range of current and historical real-life stories. Writing and producing credits include: McNeill of Tranent: Fastest Man in the World (2014-2015), The Coolidge Effect (2016-2020), and 549: Scots of the Spanish Civil War (2018–2020).