WORLDS  ALIVE !  2025

Agnes Christina is a young Chinese Indonesian performer, performance artist and writer who also works in film, textiles and painting. Her work often deals with her experiences as a Chinese Indonesian woman.

Kōbō Abe was a Japanese writer, playwright, musician, photographer, and inventor. He is best known for his 1962 novel The Woman in the Dunes that was made into an award-winning film.

Pieter-Dirk Uys is the Barry Humphries of South Africa.  He dresses in wild costumes and takes the micky out of every political and social issue. His website has many monologues that he allows people to use anyway they wish, for no cost. We’ve chosen Nelson’s Warden. Here he is with Nelson Mandela, a fan.

Nora Vagi Brash, CMG OBE , was a playwright and author. She wrote plays for stage and radio in a combination of English, Tok Pisin, and Hiri Motu, satirically dealing with conflicts between urban and rural people during the modernization of the country. Her Which Way, Big Man? was first performed in 1976 by the National Theatre Company.

Anuvab Pal is an Indian playwright and screenwriter.  He was based in the United States for twelve years where he wrote Chaos Theory. Playbill named him “the leading South Asian playwright in the U.S.A”.

 Faith Ng is a playwright and Associate Artistic Director of Checkpoint Theatre. Her plays include The Fourth Trimester (2022), which won Best Original Script and Production of the Year at the Straits Times Life Theatre Awards 2023, A Good Death (part of Esplanade’s The Studios 2018), Normal (2017, 2015), For Better or For Worse (2013) and wo(men) (2010). A Young Artist Award (2018) recipient, her collection of plays, Faith Ng: Plays Volume 1, was published by Checkpoint Theatre (2016).

Hassan Abdulrazzak is an Iraqi playwright and writer. He was born in Prague. He  has a PhD in molecular biology from University College London. His plays have been produced in the UK, India, Australia (Belvoir Theatre) and elsewhere. 

South African Ismail Mahomed is a multi-award winning arts administrator and playwright. He has been Chief Executive Officer of the Market Theatre Foundation, Artistic Director of the National Arts Festival and is currently Senior Cultural Specialist of the US Embassy (South Africa).

Kateryna Penkova 

Vitaliy Chenskiy is a playwright, screenwriter, novelist. Born in Mariupol, educated at Azov Technical University. He worked at the Azovstal metallurgical plant for seven years. In 2005 he moved to Kyiv, worked as a journalist, and began writing prose and plays that were published in such journals as Union of Writers. Photo by Dmitro Chichera.

Stafford was one of the Jamaican Rastafarians who in the 1970s promoted popular Caribbean village-based theatre. His plays rejected Western dramatic genres and naturalistic illusionism. He stressed the value of improvisation in theatre as a tool for cultural survival. Stafford promoted vegetarianism and the rejection of consumerism.