OSD Puts The Focus on New Writing: Meet Our Next 2 New Writing Creatives

A headshot of writer Louis Emmitt-Stern
Louis Emmitt-Stern

OSD are thrilled to announce the team behind the second of our 2024 New Writing commissions.

Louis Emmitt-Stern and Matthew Iliffe will be working with our One-Year students to produce Snakes and Ladders at Southwark Playhouse Borough. On sale now!

Louis Emmitt-Stern won Soho Theatre’s Tony Craze Award in 2021 for his debut play Slippery. His second play I F*cked You in My Spaceship received a critically acclaimed sold-out premiere at VAULT Festival 2023, winning the Origins Award for Outstanding New Work. It subsequently transferred to Soho Theatre. Louis was called “a rising star playwright” by Time Out. His adaptation of Mansfield Park will premiere in a site-specific production at Jane Austen’s House this summer. He is currently on attachment to Oxford Playhouse. In addition to this, Louis was recently featured in an article by The Stage about the future of game-changing theatre. If you would like to read more about Louis and his thoughts on the future of young theatremakers, you can find the article here.

Matthew Iliffe was awarded Best Director at the 2023 Off West End Awards for Bacon at the Finborough, which has subsequently been seen at Riverside Studios, Summerhall Edinburgh, Bristol Old Vic and SoHo Playhouse Off-Broadway. Other credits include Nell Gwynn (Arts Educational Schools); Foam (Finborough Theatre); Breeding (King’s Head Theatre); Four Play (Above The Stag), The Niceties & Maggie May (both Finborough); and The Burnt Part Boys (Park Theatre). As an assistant director, Matthew’s work includes Assassins (Chichester Festival Theatre) and BLACK SUPERHERO (Royal Court). He is an alumni of the National Theatre Directors’ Course and trained at the University of Bristol and on the StoneCrabs Young Directors Programme.

We are so excited to welcome Louis and Matthew into the OSD family and can’t wait to see what they will create with our One-Year students. Snakes and Ladders promises to be a fiercely funny and fast-paced study of culpability, betrayal and the true cost of privacy.

For more information about Snakes and Ladders, be sure to check out Southwark Playhouse Borough here. To read about our first New Writing team, Louis Rembges and Emily Aboud, check out our blog here. And no, it isn’t a requirement to be called Louis in order to be part of our New Writing scheme…