House + Amongst the Reeds: two plays (NHB Modern Plays)

Two explosive plays about the need to be seen.

Somalia Seaton's House is a play about family, culture clash, memory and truth. When Pat returns to her childhood home after a five-year absence, she's ready to forgive her mother for the neglect she suffered at her hands, but Mama isn't ready to let the demons back into her home.

In Chino Odimba's Amongst the Reeds, two friends scratch out a living on the margins of society. Oni and Gillian have made their home in a disused office block, finding ever more precarious ways to stay hidden from the authorities. But now Gillian is heavily pregnant, and visibility might be the only way to give her baby a chance.

Commissioned by Clean Break and produced in association with the Yard Theatre, London, House + Amongst the Reeds premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2016, before transferring to The Yard.

Acclaimed theatre company Clean Break produces ground-breaking plays with women writers and actors at the heart of its work. Founded in 1979 by two women prisoners who needed urgently to tell their stories through theatre, the company today has an independent education programme delivering theatre opportunities to women offenders and women at risk, in custodial and community settings.

Auteur

Somalia Seaton has been on attachment to Clean Break through its Emerging Writers' Programme since 2014. She trained at East 15 Acting School and is Artistic Director of No Ball Games Allowed, creating work with young people at its core. Her debut play Crowning Glory (Theatre Royal Stratford East) was shortlisted for the 2014 Alfred Fagon Award, and her play Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier is produced at the RSC (2016). in 2016 she completed a commission from The Yard Theatre, and her commissions to Talawa and The Bush, which she received while on the Talawa Writers' Programme,were in development. She was also under commission to the National Youth Theatre.