Paul Kalburgi

In a converted carpet shop storeroom, community theatre company, The Plush Pile Players are spitting tacks! When resident director Jan trips on a toaster and breaks her ankle, all hopes of staging the Off-Off-Broadway flop, Broadway Glitz - the company's last-ditch attempt to save their theatre - seem impossible. That is until a lifeline comes in the unlikely shape of a bonafide Broadway director; Percy Scott. However, Jan's eccentric ensemble soon learns that their new messiah may not be all he seems. They must unite to save the show... and the theatre. It's Broadway... or Bust!

In The Tall Grass is a verbatim play written in response to the murder of Shade Schuler, a 22 year old transgender woman whose body was found dumped in a field in the medical district of Dallas in July 2015.
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Shade’s story is set against the backdrop of wider atrocities across the US, which saw at least 23 trans or gender-nonconforming people murdered in 2015 alone – more than the total number of trans murders than in any other year that advocates had recorded. Tragically, this number looks set to surpass itself each year.

In the wake of Shade’s murder, the play focuses on a community who are left asking ‘why’, and fearing who could be next. Told through first-hand testimonies of transgender women of color in Dallas, In The Tall Grass explores the circumstances, which force many of them to exist in the underworld – ignored by society, cut off from support and legal systems; and condemned for what is ironically known as 'survival sex work'.

This is the story of a woman who led an extraordinary double life, conning Brent council out of nearly £200,000 in fraudulent benefit claims.

In 1997, Marianne Jonson (born Robert Duxbury) was granted a lease to run the Roundwood Lodge Café in Roundwood Park. In 2002, as the café became successful; Jonson applied for a second national insurance number in the name of the Countess Mariaska Romanov, claiming to have lived abroad for many years… and that Marianne Jonson was her twin sister!

Jonson claimed ‘intermittent paraplegia’, and for Social Services visits she would lie in bed with a scarf covering her head, wearing sunglasses in a darkened room – claiming to be afraid of meeting people, sensitive to light and unable to leave the house. This was backed up by a medical assessment, allegedly from eminent surgeon Professor Marsden, but cobbled together from medical journals, and written after his death!

In a six-week trial dubbed ‘stranger than fiction’, the court heard how payments funded a lavish lifestyle, including foreign travel, luxury shopping, and weekly visits to salons and manicurists.
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Told through exclusive interviews with the people at the centre of the story, court transcripts and extensive research - for the first time, this verbatim play tells the full story of the self-styled Countess who led an extraordinary double life.

Almost The Birthday Party is inspired by the famous Pinter play, ‘The Birthday Party’. Kenny and Vern are an eccentric couple in their 60’s who get more than they bargained for when they set out to make new friends by inviting complete strangers to join a play reading group in their parlour. The couple are visited late at night and asked to recall details of an absurd, and rather eventful first rehearsal, by a mysterious Mrs. Percival. (Complete with cheesecake, vicar and taxidermied cat!)

Jack visits his recently widowed father Michael in hospital, where talk quickly turns to the new woman in his life. Jack assumes his father has wasted no time in meeting someone special, whilst Michael assumes his son has discovered his real secret.
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Father and son talk at cross-purposes, as the ghost of Helen (wife and mother) plays spectator - determined to see the men she left behind work through their differences and heal their fractured relationship.