Truant Company
is Billy Cowan and Natalie Wilson.

Natalie and Billy met in March 2003 when Natalie directed a rehearsed reading of Billy’s 2002 Writing Out International award winning script Smilin’ Through - a competition launched by The Finborough Theatre, London looking for new Gay or Lesbian plays.

Sharing the same dream of developing and producing new queer specific work, they joined forces and launched Truant Company in May 2003. Their first piece of work was a multimedia monologue for Birmingham Rep called Daddy in 2004, followed by Heart Is A Lonely Hunter at Manchester's 24:7 Festival, which was written and directed by Billy. This was followed in 2005 with a co-production of Smilin' Through with Birmingham Rep, Contact in Manchester and Queer Up North. The play was nominated for Best New Play of the year by The Manchester Evening News and was remounted by The Drill Hall in London in 2007.

Other works include Stigmata (2006) which was produced by The Drill Hall and directed by Natalie. In 2009 Billy wrote and directed a new play called Care Takers which toured to the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, An Tain in Dundalk, The Lowry, The Unity in Liverpool as part of Homotopia, The Oldham Coliseum and was selected by The Library Theatre, Manchester as one of the best studio plays of the year and was remounted in 2010 for their Re:Play Festival.

During this time both Natalie and Billy have pursued individual careers as well as keeping Truant together. Natalie is now Artistic Director of Theatre Centre in London and Billy works part time for M6 Theatre Company and The Oldham Coliseum where he runs their Writing Lab.

Frog Stone in Stigmata / Photography: Robert Day

Truant Company was originally set up to produce new theatrical work that examines the world from perspectives of queer identity and sub culture. Although this is still the main objective of the company we now want to produce work that goes beyond this - in fact, all of our previous work went way beyond the pigeon-hole of a Gay Theatre label anyway. Whatever we do in the future we guarantee that our work will always be political, vital, sometimes subversive, but always thought provoking and engaging.