Tag: Stephanie Silver

Interview: Stephanie Silver, Walk of Shame

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For one, it’s a night of glory – for the other, a walk of shame… Glass Half Full Theatre return with a topical new production next month, as they bring Walk of Shame by Stephanie Silver and Emelia Marshall Lovsey to the White Bear for a limited run.

“I don’t want to give too much away,” says Stephanie. “As with most of our plays we produce, it takes the audience on a journey and the ending isn’t what you expect; we like twists and turns. It’s a story based on two characters: Alice, written by Emelia, and Liam, written by myself. We merged the two characters together to create a story of one night and two different points of view.”

The show was first picked up by Stephanie through Actor Awareness, at a new writing event based at Spotlight. “I co-produce these nights with Tom Stocks and I read the script submissions,” she explains. “I read this piece and instantly loved it, and felt it fit the ethos of plays I wanted to produce through Glass Half Full. Thought provoking, tragic and funny characters is what I like to home in on.

“Initially it was just Alice that was written, but after directing the piece for the event I went away, wrote a two-hander and asked Emelia if she fancied putting it on. We’ve since done R&D with it at the Actor Awareness new writing festival and also with Get Over it Productions at the Tabard Theatre this summer.”

One aspect that particularly drew Stephanie to Walk of Shame was its relevance: “Alice is a very loud and sexually overt character, and a lot of judgments get placed on her by the audience for her in ya face nature. I think it’s important that as women we are still breaking down stereotypes of how people perceive we should behave. Alice is not ladylike; she doesn’t say the right thing or often make the right choices. So I think her story is important, as it’s getting female characters out there that aren’t perfect and are flawed. I think women everywhere will relate to characters like Alice.

“Liam, the other character in the play, is very interesting and it’s a very different journey the audience go on with him – and without giving any twist away, it’s very interesting to see how the audience respond at the end after hearing about Liam’s life.”

Walk of Shame brings together a cast of talented creatives, the majority of whom have worked with Glass Half Full previously. “Emelia was actually in my last play Our Big Love Story; she played Katie at The Hope Theatre in March,” says Stephanie. “As a producer, when I like people I keep them around. This is Emelia’s first play as a writer, so it’s exciting to be on that journey with her. She’s worked with the company a lot.

“Michelle Payne is a very accomplished actor, writer, director, producer slash superwoman. Her last play, Full Circle, about mental health won awards at the Brewery Fringe 2018. Michelle’s worked with Glass Half Full on new writing night Series of Short Plays, and she’s just set up acting school Caspa Arts. As a woman of all trades, and who knows the company’s work well, she’s a perfect fit to direct.

“As for the cast – Liam will be played by the very talented Calum Speed, who got an Offie nom for his role as Chubby in Chubby, which also had a run at the White Bear Theatre. And I myself will take on the role as Alice, which is exciting as I’ve been mainly producing for the last year, so it’s good to get back to doing what I love.”

The show opens at the White Bear on 11th December, where it will run until the 15th. “The White Bear is a great venue for new writing and it’s also a perfect space for the piece. Its intimacy will really lend to the story, and we hope the audience will go away with a lot to think about. We aim to challenge and get the audience to talk at the bar after. Our theatre company motto is ‘hard hitting and engaging’ – which this play is to a T.”

Review: How To Save A Life at Theatre N16

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According to Cancer Research, around 1 in 135 women in the UK will be diagnosed with cervical cancer in their lifetime. Maybe that makes it sound like the odds are in our favour – but what if you’re the one?

Written and directed by Stephanie Silver, How To Save A Life is the story of Melissa (Heather Wilkins), who’s just learned she’s got cervical cancer after going to the doctor with an embarrassing and apparently minor complaint. The play follows her through her journey and explores how her diagnosis affects her relationship with those closest to her – in particular, her boyfriend Toby (John Mark Slade) and best friend Maria (Katerina Robinson).

The first surprise is how funny the play is; Melissa is an engaging central character who’s not afraid to (over)share intimate details about her life, and who, despite her immediate fears that as a cancer patient she’ll never smile again, still manages to find silver linings to her condition. All the Spice Girls dance routines, gap year plans and glitter cannons in the world, though, can’t quite distract us – or Melissa – from the sobering reality of what’s happening to her, as with each new doctor’s appointment the prognosis gets a little worse. Heather Wilkins’ performance captures really well the growing sense of panic that constantly intrudes, despite Melissa’s best attempts to smother it, and we feel each new blow right along with her.

How To Save A Life at Theatre N16

Some of the play’s most poignant scenes are shared moments with Toby and Maria, who never leave her side (literally; both John Mark Slade and Katerina Robinson remain on stage throughout, filling in all the other roles and ensuring the right prop is always to hand). Though it’s initially heartwarming to see their unwavering support, as the play goes on it begins to make things worse, because Melissa’s all too aware of how much she means to them and what it’ll be like for them to lose her. Should the play be developed into a full-length piece – and let’s hope it is – it would be great to see this complex relationships angle explored in more depth.

Perhaps inevitably, given that it was written by a medical professional, the play’s immediate impact is also to educate its audience about the symptoms to look out for, and the importance of cervical cancer screening. Far from lecturing, however, it does this very naturally through Melissa, as she not only shares what initially led her to consult the doctor but also reflects on the other earlier signs she brushed off as “normal”. As a woman in the audience, it’s almost impossible not to be affected or go away with a heightened awareness of the risks.

It’s still early days for How To Save A Life, which is performed at Theatre N16 this week as part of the Catapult new writing festival – but already there’s a huge amount of potential in this short but impactful piece. If nothing else, it should encourage more people to go for screening, but it’s also a deeply poignant look at one young woman’s devastating personal journey through a cancer diagnosis and beyond. I hope we’ll see more of it in the future.

Review: Our Big Love Story at The Hope Theatre

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In June 2017, Theresa May concluded her response to the UK’s third terrorist attack in as many months with these defiant words: “We must come together, we must pull together, and united we will take on and defeat our enemies.”

The call for unity and defiance is a common refrain at times like these, and rightly so; faced with such mindless horror and violence, it’s important that we look out for each other, and of course we should present a united front against those who want to harm us. But what happens when that determination to protect our way of life at all costs goes a step too far?

In Our Big Love Story, Stephanie Silver explores the idea of radicalisation of teenagers – only not, as one might expect, that of young Muslims. Instead it’s a young white girl, Destiny (Holly Ashman), who’s drawn in by the racist rhetoric of her dad’s EDL group following the July 7 bombings in 2005. Her anger at the devastation and loss of life is both understandable and relatable, but it’s also wildly misplaced – having finally convinced herself that her classmate and secret crush Anjum (Naina Kohli) isn’t a terrorist because she’s not a Muslim, she moves on to a new and equally innocent target, with horrifying consequences.

Though the story takes place on and immediately after the 2005 attack, it could just as easily be happening today, at a time when the threat of terror attacks remains high, and far right groups in the UK and overseas gain ever more ground, both socially and politically. That said, July 7 feels like a particularly significant landmark to choose: the first example of radical Islamist terror most of us – and certainly the four teenage characters in the play – can remember on home soil, and the moment at which attitudes towards Muslims began to shift rapidly in an uncomfortable direction.

The play begins as two separate love stories, neither of which has any obvious connection to terrorism; it’s not until it’s almost over that all the threads finally link together. While Destiny and Anjum discuss their mutual attraction and Destiny worries what her dad will think, Katie (Emelia Marshall Lovsey) and Jack (Alex Britt) are more coy about their own budding romance, recalling with some embarrassment their parents’ attempts to educate them on the birds and bees. It’s instantly clear that although they’re on the brink of adulthood, these young people are still of an age where their parents have an influence on them – a fact that will take on darker significance as the play goes on.

Into the midst of all this youthful exuberance steps The Teacher (Osman Baig), a religious Muslim man injured in the attack, with an account that’s harrowing in its graphic detail. He’s traumatised by what he saw that day, but even more so by not knowing the fate of a fellow passenger and his little girl, and over the course of the play describes how this trauma affected his life in the days and weeks afterwards. At the same time, he gives us an insight into the judgment and suspicion faced by Muslims in the wake of this and other attacks – a judgment he eventually begins to turn on himself as his precious faith slips away.

The Teacher’s appearances slow the tempo of Calum Robshaw’s otherwise fast-paced production, with Osman Baig’s direct and personal delivery ensuring that we hang on his every word. The play’s conclusion brings all five characters together and is performed with genuine and heartfelt emotion by the young cast, but it’s reassuring to see that while in some ways their lives have been irrevocably changed, we can still catch glimpses of those giddy teenagers we met earlier, still falling in love and convinced they can conquer the world.

I saw an extract from the opening of Our Big Love Story at an Actor Awareness scratch night last year, and was intrigued by the multiple different themes that the play seemed to be dealing with: love, sex, religion, racism, porn… It’s satisfying therefore to see how the full-length play successfully weaves these themes together, forming a coherent narrative that’s thought-provoking, moving and, at times, quite unsettling. There’s still a lot going on, and the play could be longer to allow it to delve into each issue in more depth – but as it stands, the story already provides more than enough food for thought to keep us going for quite some time.

Can’t see the map on iPhone? Try turning your phone to landscape and that should sort it. I don’t know why but I’m working on it… 😉

Review: The Monologues of a Tired Nurse at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre

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Stephanie Silver’s aim when she wrote The Monologues of a Tired Nurse was to give audiences “a brutally honest account of how it feels to work within the NHS in a understaffed, underpaid and emotionally draining time”. As a nurse herself, it’s a feeling she knows all too well, and though her characters are fictional, it’s clear throughout that the play is coming from a very personal place.

Brutal is an accurate word to sum up the show, which sees newly qualified nurse Emily grow gradually more and more dishevelled and distressed (not to mention covered in various unmentionable body fluids) as she realises actually being a nurse is considerably tougher than she expected. Her mentor, the older, wiser and much more experienced Sally, tries to toughen her up, not because she enjoys being mean, but because when you’re working in acute medicine, there’s no time to stop, worry, think (or eat, sleep, breathe…) – you just have to get on with it and hope for the best.

The play, directed by Simon Nader, makes a political statement about the increasingly limited resources available to the NHS, placing ever more pressure on the already stretched staff and putting patients’ lives at risk as a result. Stephanie Silver’s Sally has grown used to working under this pressure, but that doesn’t mean she’s okay with it – her monologues reveal a bitterness and world-weary honesty; if she could go back, she tells us frankly, she’d choose a different career. She’s done her fair share of crying over the years, but these days she just smokes and drinks, puts the tough days behind her and moves on, because she has no choice – if she breaks down, the patients will still be there needing help, and if she’s not there to offer it, then who will?

Makenna Guyler’s Emily, on the other hand, is young and idealistic, and hers is a personal rather than political viewpoint. She went into nursing for a very specific reason, inspired by a traumatic family history and lingering sense of guilt, but her fear of cracking under the pressure means she repeatedly does just that. Despite her brave attempts to claim that getting a thank you from a patient makes the long hours and emotional turmoil all worthwhile, her bright smile begins to crack more and more frequently. The harsh fact of the matter is that at the end of the day, wanting to help – however desperately – may not be enough.

Despite, or perhaps because of, these difficult truths, it’s impossible to leave the theatre without a new respect and admiration for anyone in the nursing profession. Put aside any misguided beliefs that nurses are just there to hold hands and empty bedpans; they have to make life or death decisions every single day, and that responsibility alone – even with limitless resources at their disposal – would be enough to break a lot of people.

The growing crisis in the NHS is well documented, and we’ve heard a lot in recent months about the struggles of junior doctors to keep up with ever-increasing workloads – but nurses never seem to make the headlines, despite being an equally essential part of the health service so many of us take for granted. The Monologues of a Tired Nurse aims to remedy this, and does so with unflinching honesty. It’s not pretty… but it certainly packs a punch.


Can’t see the map on iPhone? Try turning your phone to landscape and that should sort it. I don’t know why but I’m working on it… 😉

Interview: Stephanie Silver, Monologues of a Tired Nurse

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Who better to write a play about what it’s like to work for the NHS than someone who does it every day? Stephanie Silver was inspired by her own professional experiences to write Monologues of a Tired Nurse, which has its final run this week at the Lion and Unicorn as part of the Camden Fringe.

“I’m a nurse and have been for the last eight years,” says Stephanie. “I was working on a cardiothoracic intensive care for a while; it can be a tough environment. I was going through some personal problems and having some episodes of feeling very down about my job. I sat down and wrote some monologues to get some feelings off my chest and Tired Nurse kind of happened.

“It’s a brutally honest account of how it feels to work within the NHS in a understaffed, underpaid and emotionally draining time. The stories are fictionalised, but based on real life encounters of how it feels to be a nurse or any another healthcare professional working in today’s health service on an emotional and personal level.”

The show’s been in development since 2015, since Stephanie performed it at one of the first ever Actor Awareness scratch nights. “It’s changed a lot since then,” she says. “Even after performing it at Edinburgh 2016, we changed it up for the London run at Baron’s Court in 2017. I want it to be as visceral and engaging as possible to really grab the audience’s attention, and the director Simon Nader has always been fantastic in bringing the vision of the piece alive.

“Nurses definitely relate to the play. Anyone who works in the public services in any capacity, whether they are a teacher, policeman, fireman or army officer, can relate to the level of pain and stress in the play and the feelings of never being good enough, especially in the current climate with all the cuts and pressures to work faster and be more efficient but with twice the work load. An army veteran told us in Edinburgh it was some of the most honest accounts of working on the frontline he had seen – that meant a lot.

“I’d like people to see the human, the person behind the professional. I’m sure most people do but the papers and government spin so much crap that it is infuriating. Health care professionals aren’t cogs or robots, they’re people trying their best. And if you want a great health service providing the best care then please look at who you vote for and how you treat the people you meet at point of service. Make a conscious effort to invest in our healthcare in more ways than just saying, ‘I pay my taxes, so I am owed this’.”

After doing some acting as a child, Stephanie trained as a nurse before returning to theatre as an adult. “When I was ten I was in Goodnight Mister Tom, a TV film, and then at 18 I did a summer course at The Poor School, but after that thought I couldn’t afford drama school so I should do a sensible job, and kinda just stayed until I turned 28! Then I thought fuck it, time to probably do some acting before it’s too late. I also had a brain haemorrhage, which soon makes you realise that if you keep leaving things you might be dead before you actually get to do them!

“Juggling the two jobs is doable. Must actors have many jobs, it can feel like two very different worlds! Mainly it’s hard work, long hours and no sleep. I hardly see my friends but I’ve been trying to work on balance. I don’t waste time, I write everyday, and I do one thing everyday for my acting, whether it’s write an email or read a bit of a play or watch something to inspire me. I also do emails on the tube, on the toilet – anywhere really. You can sleep when you’re dead, right?! My mum always says that!”

As well as writing and performing in Tired Nurse, Stephanie’s also set up Glass Half Full Theatre, a company dedicated to creating daring, provocative work. “I really love writing and find it rather depressing waiting around as an actor so decided to produce my own writing,” she explains. “I’m not very well connected as I come from a zero theatrical background, so I got involved with Actor Awareness and met a lot of like-minded people looking to create work. At one of their first scratch nights, I performed Tired Nurse. I asked a mate along and then we decided due to the amazing response to take it to Edinburgh. That was financially not a great idea but it was one of the best experiences.

“I also got heavily involved with Actor Awareness and realised that there a lot of actors just not working – a lot – and what a brilliant thing if I can produce work. So I created Glass Half Full, dedicated to creating thought-provoking contemporary plays with a strong social, political, ethical, domestic backbone; plays with messages aimed at a young demographic, about the world we live in today and the kinds of world we could live in. So hopefully we are making thought-provoking challenging plays. Fingers crossed!”

Glass Half Full have lots of exciting plans for the year ahead: “This is our last run of Tired Nurse as we’ve been doing it for the last year. The immediate aim is to look to produce our show Walk of Shame for EdFringe 2018. I also produce new writing nights every so often. Hoping to do one of those in September so keep an eye out on Twitter, the event is called A Series of Short Plays – we did the first event in May, and it was a great night so we aim to be back with that but with a twist!

“We also have a play called Our Big Love Story, a story of racism after the July 2005 bombings which we are getting on its feet for production in 2018. That’s enough to get on with for now…”

Catch the final run of Monologues of a Tired Nurse at the Lion and Unicorn from 16th-19th August.