About me

BACKGROUND...

I trained on the Royal Exchange Theatre and the Soho Theatre playwriting schemes, with RTYDS at the New Vic Theatre, and spent a year with English Touring Theatre developing new work rooted in real people’s lives.

I was the first person in my family to go to University, getting a Music BMus and History MA, both from the University of Manchester. 

My previous work ranges from a fantastical verbatim play drawn entirely from interviews with older gay men, to multiple full-length musicals (including a jukebox musical made with community music groups in East Manchester), and a single-room horror play currently in development with Silent Uproar and National Theatre Studio. My play This Is Not America won a Bruntwood Prize 2017.

I’ve written for SKY TV, been a presenter on kids’ TV show JoJo & Gran Gran and wrote/performed a theatrical party on a moving bus for the Royal Exchange Theatre. I also pop onto BBC Radio Manchester one Saturday afternoon each month, to share a couple of my latest anecdotes.

CURRENTLY...

Over the last year, I’ve worked with long-term collaborator Sue Dunderdale, as well as Diane Shorthouse at Evolutionary Films, to develop a new TV series pitch, and pilot episode.

I’ve also been working with people in recovery to co-curate Portraits of Recovery at the Whitworth Art Gallery, and I created a new musical work with fifteen schools across Greater Manchester for the National Theatre’s Speak Up project.

I’m co-director of arts and heritage company IAP:MCR and, as part of our PROTEST! project, I’m making a short-film and producing a ten-part event series offering new and exciting ways for audiences to explore the archives and legacies of Section 28. 

I’ve just finished performing in the award-winning sell-out tour of my play With Love, Mr. Gay (about the time I got a homophobic death threat for moving a neighbour’s bin…). We’re currently looking for further R&D funding.

OTHER STUFF...

All of this aside, I’m also one fifth of Sherpa K – a multi-generational Queer art/folk outfit– and I founded Free Manchester Walking Tours and the LGBT+ Manchester Walking Tour over a decade ago.