From Page to Stage

How do we use performance to tell our stories? From Page to Stage explores what’s involved in taking real queer stories from lived experience, through the writing process, onto the stage. Queer playwrights discuss their own practices, and what’s required to rise to the unique challenges (and adventures) of creating queer theatre.

Coral Wylie is a writer, performer and theatre maker from West London. Their work finds its voice in the natural world (most often bugs..), playing in the overlaps of science and art. Coral is a founding member of the Bush Theatre’s Young Company, a graduate of the Bush Theatre’s Emerging Writers’ Group and an alumnus of Soho Theatre Writers Lab. Their first full length play ENTOMOLOGY was longlisted for the Tony Craze Award in 2022. Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew was shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award in 2023, before premiering at the Bush in February 2025 as Wylie’s professional playwriting debut.

Vinnie Heaven is an actor and writer who makes work full of heart, sprinkled with the surreal. Their most recent play FAUN (commissioned by Cardboard Citizens) aimed to highlight rising numbers of trans youth homelessness, it toured nationally in 2023 and was nominated for a London Pub Theatres Standing Ovation Award. Vinnie has also written and toured a solo show, She’s a Good Boy and family show, Charmane, both supported by Strike A Light, Battersea Arts Centre and Pegasus Theatre. Their acting credits include; Richard II at Bridge Theatre, Cowbois for the RSC/ Royal Court, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe, The Nevers for HBO/Warner Media and Mo <3 Kyra for Film4.

Emma Frankland is a multi award winning writer, theatre maker and performer passionate about centering principles of care in her work, which is often described as playfully destructive and gloriously irreverent. She is an Associate Artist with Marlborough Productions in Brighton. Most recently her play No Apologies – about wishful thinking and a radical mis-remembering of Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged concert received rave reviews at the Edinburgh Festival, winning both the Bragi Award for artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation in new writing and contemporary performance and also a Besties Award for New Writing. Over the past three years she has also gained her first screen credits – writing episodes on commission for Channel 4’s iconic continuing drama Hollyoaks. She has a full length play, TRAP, in development as well as a new show for families and children. Over the past decade, Emma’s status has been established as a prominent and innovative theatre artist, whose work has been focussed on issues around gender identity and politically motivated performances. In 2019, five of her shows were published by Methuen as a collected volume None of Us is Yet a Robot – Five Performances on Gender Identity and the Politics of Transition and she contributed a chapter for the recent Palgrave, History of Women on Stage. Her work is taught on university syllabus’ around the world and was recently written about in Harriet Curtis’ Mess and Contemporary Performance as well as Rosemary Waugh’s Running the Room. Emma regularly performs and leads workshops around the world, recently leading a two week workshop on decolonising theatre and the trans canon for the prestigious Stratford Festival in Ontario. This resulted in the co-creation of a guidance document for better working practices when collaborating with trans artists. This workshop formed part of a long project that culminated in 2023 when she co-adapted John Lyly’s classic play Galatea which was performed (for the first time in 450 years) as part of the Brighton Festival. Her adaptation is published by Bloomsbury. In her spare time, she skates for Brighton Rockers Roller Derby.

(Chair) Dorothy Max Prior is a writer and artist – London born and bred but now living in Brighton. As an artist she works in performance, spoken word and sound installation. She is editor of Total Theatre Magazine, and writes for and edits other arts publications. In other lives, Max was a punk muse, post-punk drummer (with Rema Rema and Psychic TV, amongst others) and exotic dancer. Somewhere along the way, she has taught ballroom dancing, and toured the world as a cabaret dancer, street theatre performer, choreographer and director. She has written two memoirs: 69 Exhibition Road – Twelve True-life Tales from the Fag End of Punk, Porn and Performance (2022); and Sex is No Emergency – Adventures in a Post Punk Wonderland (2025). Both are published by Strange Attractor Press.