Actors Touring Company artistic director Matthew Xia is commissioning two new plays by women of colour, Nessah Muthy and Yasmin Joseph.
A co-commission with Theatre Royal Plymouth, Muthy’s play will look at right-wing grooming and radicalisation within the online gaming community.
She has won the Character 7 Prize and the Adrian Pagan Award 2018 and has worked with the Royal Court Theatre, Punchdrunk, the National Youth Theatre, Cardboard Citizens and HighTide amongst many others.
Yasmin Joseph’s play, inspired by her tweet when travelling “whilst Black / whilst woman” that went viral, looks at how the black female body is put under damaging scrutiny. This will be a co-commission with London's Soho Theatre as part of the Soho Six. She is under commission with Clean Break and the Royal Court via the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
ATC is currently fundraising to commission more plays. Xia has said of the #continuecreativity appeal, “the world seems to have stopped spinning momentarily, magnifying the racial disparity and social inequality that has always been present. As ever in crisis, the marginalised become more so, the vulnerable become the acutely vulnerable.
“Our #continuecreativity appeal is the way to enable people to help us commission and amplify the marginalised voices who are at the centre of this very moment.”