Fizzy Sherbet: new podcast spotlighting Womxn playwrights from around the world to launch in August 2020

Fizzy Sherbet, a theatre collective of womxn artists, is launching the pilot season of its podcast showcasing short plays in English from womxn writers across the globe, with the first episode being released on August 24th and subsequent episodes released weekly throughout September.

Presented by Fizzy Sherbet, a theatre collective of womxn artists, the new and all-female team consisting of Tamara von Werthern, Lily McLeish, Steph Weller, Anna Girvan, Josephine Starte, Sandra Theresa Buch and Ameena Hamid, the podcast aims to provide an essential international platform for womxn writers and directors. The pilot season will consist of seven episodes and will be written, directed and performed by womxn from countries including the UK, Germany, Denmark, South Africa, the US, Australia and Hong Kong. The pilot season will include work from Amy Ng, Babirye Bukilwa, Buhle Ngaba, Eve Leigh, Marie Bjørn, Tamara von Werthern and Josephine Starte.

Fizzy Sherbet began as a series of readings in London at Hackney Attic accepting submissions from womxn playwrights around the world. Despite its London home, Fizzy Sherbet has long had a global audience. Its reach encompasses 45 different countries, including Australia, Russia, the US, China, India, Africa, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates but also places such as Nepal, Greenland, Malta, the Faroe Islands and Macedonia. As theatres shut and the worldwide lockdown came into effect, its founders decided it was the perfect time to make their readings permanent and internationally accessible in the form of a podcast.

Speaking about the launch of the podcast, Fizzy Sherbet’s co-founders, playwright Tamara von Werthern and director Lily McLeish, said:  “We are really passionate about supporting womxn artists and achieving greater gender equality in the theatre industry but also about finding ways to cross borders and connect artists globally. Making an international theatre podcast felt like a perfect way of achieving these goals.”

“It's an incredibly difficult time for theatre right now and we felt the urgent need to make a positive change and support those who will be most adversely affected by both the economic downturn in general but also the catastrophic downturn within the theatre industry.”

“We are dedicated to amplifying womxn’s voices and creating a platform that enables womxn artists to collaborate internationally.”

The first episode will be released on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other streaming platforms on 24th August. To keep up to date like Fizzy Sherbet on Facebook /FizzySherbetPlays and @fizzysherbetfun on Twitter.

Find out more at www.fizzysherbetplays.com

If you are an actor or director and would like to get involved in the podcast please email your interest to fizzysherbetcreatives@gmail.com.  For writers please submit your play to fizzysherbetsubmissions@gmail.com which is open for rolling submission.

Notes to Editors

About Fizzy Sherbet Fizzy Sherbet is a new writing initiative set up in 2017 by Lily McLeish and Tamara von Werthern to showcase exciting writing by womxn from across the world. Inspired by the work of Tonic Theatre, which addresses gender inequality in theatre, Fizzy Sherbet sets out to amplify underrepresented voices, and to give a platform to womxn writers. Based in London, UK, we started out accepting submissions from around the world, which were originally staged in a series of readings at Hackney Attic, London.

Tamara von Werthern Tamara von Werthern is a writer, primarily working for stage and screen. She set up Fizzy Sherbet as producer together with artistic director Lily McLeish in January 2017. As a playwright, her work includes The White Bike (The Space, London, 2017). Her work has been shown at the Royal Court, the Arcola Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, the Lion & Unicorn Theatre, London, The White Bear Theatre, London, and the Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh, as well as a number of site-specific performances with her own theatre company Para-Site Productions and Plays Rough London. Her writing has been long-listed for the Papatango Prize and BBC Writersroom Drama Room. For screen, her film I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire (director Marcus Liversedge) won the Best Screenplay Lift-Off Season Award 2019, a Lift-Off London Special Mention Award, Best Original Story (Honorary Mention) at LA Independent Film Awards and Best Short Film (Comedy) at Kosice Film Festival. Tamara holds a BA in English & Drama from Queen Mary University of London and an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She has been a member of the team at independent theatre publisher Nick Hern Books since 2003.  

Lily McLeish Lily McLeish is a British-German theatre director. She is a creative fellow of the RSC, associate director to Katie Mitchell and co-founder and artistic director of Fizzy Sherbet. As Director her work includes Killing It by Josephine Starte; Scrounger by Athena Stevens nominated for 6 Off West End Awards including Best Director; dance-theatre piece While You Are Here written by Eve Leigh and choreographed by Jonathan Goddard; Schism by Athena Stevens nominated for an Olivier Award; The White Bike by Tamara von Werthern; A Colder Water Than Here by Matthew Jones, which was awarded the Origins Award For Outstanding New Work. As Associate Director, her recent work includes Norma Jeane Baker of Troy by Anne Carson, a melologue, starring Ben Whishaw and Renée Fleming for The Shed, New York; Orlando by Virginia Woolf for the Schaubühne, Berlin; Bluets by Maggie Nelson for the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg; Anatomy of a Suicide by Alice Birch for The Royal Court.

Additional team biographies:

Steph Weller is an independent theatre and festival producer based in Reading, where she produced the Reading Fringe Festival. She is an Old Vic 12 producer (2018-2019), supported by The Old Vic to develop new Black British musical  Black Power Desk. She also creates work as Working Birthday, with writer/performer Natasha Sutton Williams. Steph is a Non-Executive Director for Ironclad Creative, which provides training, networking and commissioning opportunities for disadvantaged and/or underrepresented emerging creatives. She is supported by a Stage One bursary for commercial producers.

Anna Girvan is a London based director. She is originally from Newcastle and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School for an MA in Directing. Anna is passionate about giving platforms to under-represented voices and her proudest moment was working with Young Vic Taking Part creating a piece of theatre with a company of 30 homeless people called Go Between. As a director her work in theatre includes Our Country’s Good at Tobacco Factory Theatres, Twelfth Night at the Southwark Playhouse; Rudolf at the Midlands Arts Centre; The Internet Was Made For Adults at the Vaults Festival; Go Between, Someone Else and Room 504 at the Young Vic. She will next be directing The Invisible Man for Northern Stage. Assistant and associate director work includes Leopoldstadt at The Wyndham; Noises Off! at The Garrick; Exit the King, The Red Lion and The Beaux’ Stratagem at the National; People, Places and Things on UK tour; Hamlet and King Lear for the RSC and on UK and US tour; Richard II at Shakespeare’s Globe and Happy Days at the Young Vic.

Josephine Starte is an award-winning writer-performer. Also an improv comic she’s an associate of Live Beasts (‘A reason to be cheerful’, Tim Crouch), and co-founder of GUM Improv (nominated for Phoenix Remix’s Best Comedy Group 2019). As a writer she’s been long-listed for the Bruntwood and the BAFTA Rocliffe award amongst other prizes, and was an invited writer at the Alpine Fellowship’s Venice 2018 Symposium alongside Polly Stenham and Emma Watson. Her most recent play, KILLING IT, was at VAULT Festival 2020, starring Janet Henfrey (Wolf Hall, The Crown) and Doña Croll (Eastern Promises, Doctor Who); 'Truly breathtaking and beautiful theatre that cannot be missed … a prescient and hilarious script. One to watch’ (A Younger Theatre).  As an actor she's won Best Actress in the NoBudge Independent Film Awards for BLUE MONDAY (dir. Charles Chintzer Lai), and Best Duo in the LA Independent Short Awards for I DON’T WANT TO SET THE WORLD ON FIRE (dir. Marcus Liversedge).

Sandra Theresa Buch works with a passion for new writing as a mentor, dramaturg, reader and director. The last five years she has been head of BA in Playwriting at The Danish National School of Performing Arts. Her artistic research projects at DASPA explore frontiers of new writing with projects such as ‘performative text creation strategies’ and ‘how to write for humans and robots’. Sandra lives in Denmark and lived in London for more than 10 years. She studied drama and rhetoric at Copenhagen University, writing and directing at RADA/King’s College, and has a diploma in script development from NFTS. 

Ameena Hamid is a creative producer based in London and company director of Ameena Hamid Productions Ltd. Her work focuses on putting underrepresented voices centre stage and she is particularly passionate about increasing inclusivity and representation in theatre. She was one of the EdFringe and British Council’s Emerging Producers for 2019 and is currently on Stage One’s Bridge the Gap Programme.  Ameena has produced work at VAULT Festival, the Old Red Lion, Battersea Arts Centre amongst other venues as well as touring work across the UK. She is currently curating The Graduate Festival at The Actor’s Centre and producing ‘Right Ho, Jeeves’ a podcast adaptation of the P.G. Wodehouse classic.

For any press and publicity enquiries, please contact 

Tamara von Werthern tamarawerthern@yahoo.com or Ameena Hamid at ameenahamidtheatre@gmail.com