Billy Cowan

Billy has a BA(Hons) degree in Imaginative Writing/Theatre Studies and an MPhil(b) in Playwriting Studies. His plays include Daddy (B’ham Rep 2004), Heart is a Lonely Hunter (24:7 Festival, Manchester 2004) Smilin’Through (Contact, Birmingham Rep, Queer Up North 2005) and Stigmata (The Drill Hall, London 2006). He has just finished a new play called Transitions which received an ACE, Grant for Arts Award. He has also written a T.I.E. play called Sidelined for Bolton Octagon’s Activ8 group.

Billy is also an experienced drama facilitator and works part-time as a Youth Theatre Leader for M6 Theatre Company and The Stockport Garrick. He is committed to working with young people on the margins of society and has completed many projects with excluded teenagers for organisations like The Phoenix in Bolton, Fairbridge and Youth Challenge.

Billy also writes fiction and his next short-story At That Age is about to be published in a book about gay parenthood called Donors and Dads (Haworth Press, Canada).

In 2005, Billy received support from The Peggy Ramsay Foundation which helped him to write Stigmata.

Links

24:7 - Daisy Wang meets Billy Cowan

Natalie Wilson

Natalie studied Theatre Studies at University of Glasgow. After graduating, she collaborated with writer/academic Dee Heddon to create new feminist performance which toured Scotland, Belgium and Morocco. She was invited to Trinity College Dublin to direct Sea Plays; an innovative pairing of new Scottish and classic Irish drama. She went on to be part of the team that launched Glasgay!, the largest LGBT International arts event in the UK.

She was appointed Trainee Director with 7:84 Theatre Company Scotland, working on the Scottish premiere of Angels In America by Tony Kushner and the World Premiere of Caledonia Dreaming by David Grieg. Natalie was later appointed Associate Director at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme before becoming an independent Director. She has since directed numerous productions at theatres and drama schools across the UK. She has continued to devise and facilitate innovative participatory projects to widen access to theatre-making with people from all backgrounds.

Her productions include Her Other I (Theatre Off the Fence), With Respect (Big Stramash), Sea Plays (Samuel Beckett Centre), Forbidden Pleasures (Traverse Theatre), Talking Bollocks, Tongues, Valley Song (7:84), Travels With My Aunt, Neville’s Island, Loot, East Is East, Misery (New Vic Theatre, Stoke), The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Things We Do For Love (Salisbury Playhouse), Amy’s View (Salisbury Playhouse/Northampton Theatres), King of Spin (Leicester Haymarket), Beautiful Thing (Nottingham Playhouse/National Tour), Brighton Beach Memoirs, Be My Baby, Midden (Oldham Colieum), Forward (Birmingham Rep), Daddy (Truant Co/Birmingham Rep), Cut To The Chase (Complete Productions/Tour), Martha Loves Michael (Ruffian Productions/Pleasance), Smilin’ Through (Truant Co/Contact/Birmingham Rep) and Stigmata (Truant Co/Drill Hall).

In 2005, Natalie received the Rose Bruford Memorial Trust Directors Award to research new work through different media including secondments with BBC Radio Drama and Hampstead Theatre. In 2006 , she was Associate Producer for Queerupnorth International Arts Festival. She has also directed the HIV Candlelit Vigil at Manchester Pride between 2003 and 2005 and is Artistic Director (with Billy Cowan) of Truant Company.