Meet the ten playwrights working with Simon Stephens

Dan Bain is a multi-award-winning New Zealand playwright whose body of work spans mainstage, fringe and youth theatre, often combining comedy with adaptation of classic texts.  

His version of The Odyssey won the 2024 Adam Award for Best New Zealand Play, the Dean Parker Award for Best Adaptation, and the McNaughton Award for Best South Island Play.   

The sensibilities of his plays are significantly influenced by his work as a theatre director and stand-up comedian. He is currently developing a new piece of theatre, Fossils, alongside his debut novel based on Richard III, Crookback. 

Kathryn is an award-winning screenwriter, playwright and writing coach.  She has significant credits for stage and screen. Her produced plays include Bowled Over, Mike & Virginia and The Campervan.  

Her latest work is the successful one-woman show Nicola Cheeseman is Back which was shortlisted for the 2023 Adams Playwriting Award and premiered in 2024. It enjoyed an encore season at Q Theatre last year and featured in several arts festivals. Nicola Cheeseman is Back is currently on the Centrepoint production slate for 2026.  

She was also recently published by Upstart Press with the co-written literary gem How to Spot a Dickhead and in the award-winning horror anthology Remains to Be Told – Dark Tales of Aotearoa (Clan Destine Press). She is currently working on two new theatre pieces.  

Cindy Diver is a proud Kāi Tahu professional actor, director, writer and casting director with thirty years of experience across theatre, television and film while also being the owner-manager of Ōtepoti-based Theatreworks Ltd and InterACT Drama Classes.  

In recent years her focus has been social and verbatim theatre, including the award-winning The Keys are in the Margarine and Resilience – a COVID lockdown theatre response. Her latest work, Wahine Mātātoa - the Mostly True story of Erihāpeti Pātahi explores the mostly true story of her great-great-grandmother Erihāpeti Pātahi, continuing her commitment to bringing Kāi Tahu stories to the stage. 

Anders Falstie-Jensen hails from the plains of Jutland, Denmark. He is the co-founder of The Rebel Alliance and the company’s main producer, writer and director. Key credits include The Valentina, Back to Square One?, Watching Paint Dry and Standstill.  

Anders was the winner of the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award for 2026. 

Karin McCracken is an award-winning writer and performer based in Pōneke and Co-Artistic Director of EBKM alongside Eleanor Bishop.  

Her recent work Heartbreak Hotel has toured internationally to Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Melbourne's RISING Festival and London's Soho Theatre, with upcoming touring to New York and Toronto’s Luminato Festival in 2026.  

Other works include a large-scale adaptation Gravity & Grace (co-adapted with Eleanor Bishop), and Yes Yes Yes (co-written with Eleanor Bishop), a show for young people about consent and healthy relationships.  

She and Eleanor Bishop were the first creative partnership to receive the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award in its 40-year history. In 2025, Karin was awarded a prestigious MacDowell Fellowship, where she wrote a new work for stage. 

Victor Rodger ONZM is a multiple award-winning writer whose plays Black Faggot and My Name is Gary Cooper have been produced nationally and internationally.   

He has also produced critically acclaimed productions of Tusiata Avia's Wild Dogs Under My Skirt and The Savage Coloniser Show. 

Ana Chaya Scotney (Ngāi Tūhoe) is a writer, actress, and film and theatre-maker, hailing from Te-Upoko-o-te-Ika Wellington, New Zealand.  

She has created and performed five solo works including ScatterGun After The Death of Rūaumoko (Silo Theatre, 2024), which she is currently adapting into a screenplay with support from the New Zealand Film Commission.  

Her recent short film Kurī  was shot across Tāmaki Makaurau and Te Urewera as part of Dame Jane Campion's film intensive, A Wave In The Ocean, and premiered at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival. 

Ankita Singh is an award-winning screenwriter, playwright, producer and documentary filmmaker raised between Chandigarh and Kirikiriroa.  

Her action-comedy Give Me Babies won Best Comedy at the 2024 NZ Screen Awards, and she made history as the first South Asian woman commissioned to write for a mainstage theatre company in Aotearoa with her debut play Basmati Bitch at Auckland Theatre Company.  

She is currently developing her next play, RABID, a supernatural gothic horror set in the Himalayan foothills.

Tawhi Thomas (Ngāti Maniapoto) is a multiple award-winning playwright who also enjoys life as an actor, director and educator. He is based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara - Wellington. 

Tawhi has written several plays that have been produced and has received multiple awards for his work including Bruce Mason Award and the Adam NZ Best New Play Award (twice) and the Adam NZ Best Play by a Māori Playwright (three times). 

Tainui Tukiwaho (Te Arawa, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Whakatohea, Kāi Tahu) is an award-winning writer, director, producer and actor based in Tāmaki Makaurau who has worked across film, television and theatre for the past 25 years. 

He is a founding member of Te Pou Theatre, a theatre space and production house that is dedicated to the growth of te reo Māori and kaupapa Māori in the performing arts space. 

His recent work Ration the Queen's Veges retells the events following Te Wehi Rātana's 2023 action at Te Papa, exploring the unexpected connections and storytelling that emerged during his brief incarceration.