Rachel Mars

Rachel Mars is a London-based multi award-winning writer/performer with a background in theatre, live art, and comedy. She grew up as the only gay in a British/Jewish family that attempted to balance English propriety with Yiddish volume. She privileges queer, female stories and meticulous construction.

PLAYS/MUSICALS
BLOOD PLAY was developed at the Royal Court on their intro to playwrighting course. It was at the O'Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference (US), and a semi-finalist for the Women’s Playwriting Prize (UK) and Jewish Plays Project (US).
OVER THE HILL won the T1 commission at HOME Manchester.

PERFORMANCE
Her recent shows have included a three-day metal work installation about memorial and monument, (FORGE), a choral celebration of envy (Our Carnal Hearts) and a...

Rachel Mars is a London-based multi award-winning writer/performer with a background in theatre, live art, and comedy. She grew up as the only gay in a British/Jewish family that attempted to balance English propriety with Yiddish volume. She privileges queer, female stories and meticulous construction.

PLAYS/MUSICALS
BLOOD PLAY was developed at the Royal Court on their intro to playwrighting course. It was at the O'Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference (US), and a semi-finalist for the Women’s Playwriting Prize (UK) and Jewish Plays Project (US).
OVER THE HILL won the T1 commission at HOME Manchester.

PERFORMANCE
Her recent shows have included a three-day metal work installation about memorial and monument, (FORGE), a choral celebration of envy (Our Carnal Hearts) and a Queer history of filthy sex communication (Your Sexts Are Shit: Older Better Letters). She has toured her work at International Theatre Festivals in Europe, the US and Australia including Edinburgh, Under The Radar (NY), On the Boards (Seattle), ART (Boston) and Fusebox (Austin).

SCREEN
UK and Ireland Writer’s Lab in 2021, shortlisted for the Channel4/Blacklight 4Stories 2022, Royal Court x Sister Pictures writing scheme 2023.

AWARDS
Total Theatre Award and The Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award, UK

She has developed work on residencies at The Orchard Project and Asylum Arts (US), Cove Park (UK).
She has taught theatre workshops at Universities including Oxford, Harvard, UCLA Riverside and Middlebury College, and mentored artists on theatre-making schemes across the UK.

Scripts

OUR CARNAL HEARTS

by Rachel Mars

Cast Size

5

Genre

comedy,

dark comedy,

drama,

musical,

political,

satire

This fairy comes round your house.
You, she says, are in luck.
Ask for anything you want. Anything in the world and I’ll give it to you. But whatever you ask for, your neighbour gets the same thing, but double.
Great. You say. Fine.
Cut out one of my eyes.

With a raucous chorus of original music, Rachel Mars and four belting female singers come at you with hilarious dark show about the hidden workings of one of...

This fairy comes round your house.
You, she says, are in luck.
Ask for anything you want. Anything in the world and I’ll give it to you. But whatever you ask for, your neighbour gets the same thing, but double.
Great. You say. Fine.
Cut out one of my eyes.

With a raucous chorus of original music, Rachel Mars and four belting female singers come at you with hilarious dark show about the hidden workings of one of our uglier emotions. Our Carnal Hearts is a gleeful, thrilling and murky celebration of envy, competitive spirits and all the times we f*ck each other over. Like a combination of performance, comedy, a singing lesson and a conjuring ritual, the show feels like five women have rocked up at your town and are inviting you to a beautiful, raucous theatrical ceremony.

Our Carnal Hearts is a celebration of envy, a joyous call for everyone we’ve ever wanted to be and everything we’ve ever wanted to own. A place to whoop at our own fragility and delight against our better nature. A toast to our competitive spirits and a rumbling dance for the ugly gutter-tramping parts of our souls. A show that seeks to prove that envy makes us better. That politicians are right: that its spirit runs through our hearts, lymph systems and bowels and it’s glorious and we wouldn't want it any other way.

BLOOD PLAY

by Rachel Mars

Cast Size

6—7

Genre

comedy,

dark comedy,

docudrama/historic,

drama,

satire

BLOOD PLAY is a big camp epic about the medieval Church’s creation of the blood libel myth in Norwich, smashed against the contemporary wellness/medical world that trades in similar territory. Money, power, and really shitty saints.

Your Sexts Are Shit : Older Better Letters

by Rachel Mars

Cast Size

1

Genre

comedy,

docudrama/historic,

drama,

experimental

A solo show about how we write desire.
A queer archive of the sex and love letters of James Joyce, Frida Kahlo, Eleanor Rooselvelt, Mozart and other folks who loved to write about what they wanted.
A receptacle for the worst and best sexts ever sent.
Made with two sexologists and historians, and the general public (who sent me their sexts)

OVER THE HILL

by Rachel Mars

Cast Size

6

Genre

comedy,

musical,

political

In an elder care home in Greater Manchester great changes are afoot. An aggressive takeover by a new Care corporation prompts three dead lesbians to return from history, reawakening the radical, revolutionary past of the residents. A musical. Co-written with Louise Mothersole.