Solo Play Festival: 
A double bill of plays by Monica Maffia

Monica Maffia

Mónica Maffía is a playwright, opera and theatre director born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

She has staged over 60 plays including her own translations of Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Molière, Strindberg, Berkoff, Pinter, Caryl Churchill and Tom Kempinski. She also directs repertory and contemporary opera including “Lilith, Black Moon” for which she also wrote the libretto.

Her award-winning play La Anémona y el jabalí received the "Women Creating” Prize 2024 by Water People Theatre, Chicago. It was staged as rehearsed readings at Instituto Cervantes (Chicago), in London (Omnibus Theatre) and fully staged in Spain, Argentina and Uruguay.

Her monologue Sexo Total was also part of the Out of the Wings Festival 2021, and Barons Court Theatre’s Reboot Festival 2022. 

A new phase in her dramaturgy began with En Carne Viva, commissioned by the ecological festival Planeta Vulnerable (Madrid 2019), followed by Cimbelino en la Patagonia as part of intercontinental Cymbeline in the Anthropocene Symposium (Montana, USA 2022) and her latest Tesoro Viviente premiered in Spain this year. 

Her plays have been published and translated into English, French, and Arabic.

Sophie Stevens

Sophie Stevens is Lecturer in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the Institute of Languages, Cultures, and Societies, University of London, where she specializes in Latin American theatre, performance, activism, and translation.

Her book Uruguayan Theatre in Translation: Theory and Practice was published by Legenda in 2022. Her translations have been published by The Mercurian: A Theatrical Translation Review and Inti Press.

She is a member of the Out of the Wings Collective and her translations have been presented at Royal Court Theatre, Barons Court Theatre, Omnibus Theatre, Cervantes Theatre and Southwark Playhouse. In 2023 her translation of Mónica Maffía's The Anemone and the Boar was programmed as a rehearsed reading at the Out of the Wings Festival and the translation was published by Inti press in 2024.

Luke O'Field

Luke Ofield is a writer and director, originally from Brighton. He is the Co-Artistic Director and co-founder of the award-winning company, Unmasked Theatre, which has been active since 2015.

Previously a resident director at The Rialto Theatre, Luke’s recent directing credits include the critically applauded environmental dark comedy Between Two Waves, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Twelfth Night at The Brighton Open Air Theatre, and Antony and Cleopatra which received the Best of the Fringe award from The International Youth Arts Festival, and transferred to The Rose Theatre in Kingston.

His writing credits include Accidental Birth of an Anarchist, in collaboration with Rising Tides Theatre Company and The Writers’ Bloc, which, after being nominated for several awards at The Brighton Fringe, went on to be read at The Wyndham’s Theatre on the West End. 

Alex Smith

Alexander HJ Smith ran away to the theatre as a child, training with Hammersmith's Young Blood Theatre Company and performing at venues such as Riverside Studios, the Lyric Hammersmith, and the Pleasance Edinburgh.

Recent credits include  Antonio and his Double in a production of Dario Fo's Trumpets & Raspberries, Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors, Oberon and Theseus in an open-air production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Abanazar in Aladdin at the Princess Theatre in Torquay and an Ugly Sister at the Elgiva Theatre in Chesham.

He is looking forward to reprising the role of Abanazar at the Brindley Theatre in Runcorn later this year. He was most recently seen as Banquo in the feminist reframing of the Scottish Play, Lady Macbeth Uncut, at the Drayton Arms.