Kay Adshead

In 2011, all over the Arab World, veiled women took to the streets to protest. Their calls for change were briefly celebrated, soon derided, and eventually ignored. For the first time on stage, The Singing Stones gives voice to their extraordinary stories. These are the women who snitched on Gaddafi, marched on Tahrir Square, defended the bloody borders of Kurdistan, and became the heroines of our century’s greatest struggle. But who are they? What led them to revolution? And where do they go from here? The Singing Stones is a fearless exploration of women and the Arab Spring.

The Oikos Project is an innovative partnership, with surrounding themes of environmentalism and the effects of the changing world.

Six Ensemble Plays for Young Actors is an anthology of work written for actors aged 11-25. Ideal for youth theatre groups, schools and amateur dramatic companies, it contains a diverse selection of plays suited to large casts and ensemble performance. Varying in style and subject matter, the plays offer performers, directors and designers a range of exciting challenges: from recreating the mythological world of The Odyssey to a dramatisation of two hundred years of slavery that will take the audience on a journey from eighteenth century Africa to 1990s London in Sweetpeter. Contemporary urban living is confronted in plays ranging from the starkly realistic to the playful, lyrical and surrealistic. From the innocent and imaginative world of a school playground to issues of racism, peer pressure, crime and communication in a mobile phone obsessed culture, this is a wide-ranging anthology that will enrich the repertoire of youth theatre groups and the curriculum in schools. The volume is introduced by Paul Roseby, artistic director of the National Youth Theatre.

'White people in their big shiny cars drive many kilometres with their sickness which I heal; sickness of the mind, body and of the soul. I charge a bit more for the soul' At night, a young black boy is 'questioned' by a white South African policeman.....36 years later, when the truth is dug up, a tortured Jennifer watches over her dying husband. But does her maid Beauty have the power to 'save' him, and is the price of remembering a dreadful secret one that Jennifer is prepared to pay? Bones is a ruthless excavation of South Africa in 2005, and in an age of threats, retribution and bloody revenge, it is an anthem for hope. A production directed by Adshead opened at the Bush Theatre in October 2006.

Moving from the biggest democracy on the planet to the newest, Bites takes us back to Afghanistan via Texas. In the last diner at the end of a world ravaged by war, a menu of love, death and revenge is served by the 'hired help'. Seven courses make for a poetic feast of universal tales looking back to the forgotten war and forward to a nightmarish future. Produced at the Bush Theatre, London in January 2005 (Mama Quillo in association with The Bush).

From the author of The Bogus Woman

A young woman arrives in a strange country. A woman who has committed no crime. She is indefinitely confined, humiliated and racially and sexually abused. She witnesses her guards' petty dishonesty and casual brutality. She sees innocents scapegoated and worst of all she hears the authorities lie and lie again. The country is England.