About me
I continue to combine writing with visual art and I am currently working on an animated film.
My Plays
A Smoking Revolver
Synopsis:
An ageing reclusive artist grants a rare interview. An opportunity to set the record straight.
But the interviewer has her own sinister motive for interviewing the artist.
Three acts, unfolding in reverse chronology, explore the allegations that the interviewer brings against the artist.
Number of Characters: 4
Minimum Number of Actors Required: 4
Length (in Pages): 71
Location: An artists studio and a hospital room. Present day
Key Words: Art, art criticism, predatory, dominance, humour
Has the Play Been Produced? No
Are the Rights Available? Yes
Has the Play Been Published? No
Award nominations/wins:
Reviews:
Another Greenland
Synopsis:
‘A good teacher gives knowledge; a great teacher gives himself.’
Leo Greene, teacher in a sixth-form college is suffering a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He is teaching at the school he attended as a teenager when the trauma occurred.
Back in 1977 things were different. Punk rock, Star Wars. Well, not that different. 17 year-olds are 17 year-olds. But the ghost of Leo’s 17 year-old former self revives unsettling memories of the tragic incident that has cast a shadow across his life.
Vanessa Greene has never quite got to the bottom of her husband’s post-traumatic stress disorder but when she discovers his current lesson-plans reference an ill-fated 1977 school trip to see ‘the bricks’ at the Tate Gallery, alarm bells start to ring.
Suspicions surrounding Leo’s relationship with a bright but unconfident and emotionally vulnerable student (Lily) intensify when Lily disappears from her family home. Her mobile-phone reveals the last thing she did before going missing was to send a series of cryptic text messages to Leo.
Spinning back in time to a school Parents Evening the week before Lily’s disappearance, Leo’s encounter with Lily’s guardian triggers a long-forgotten memory that reveals a far more complex relationship with Lily’s family and his concerning influence over her.
Number of Characters: 7
Minimum Number of Actors Required: 6
Length (in Pages): 70
Location: England 2024/1977
Key Words: Mental health, fake news, PTSD, Art, teaching
Has the Play Been Produced? Yes
Are the Rights Available? Yes
Has the Play Been Published? No
Award nominations/wins: longlisted Brutwood PrizeShortlisted Papatango New Writing Prize
Reviews:
Bow, You Idiot
Synopsis:
Grieving over the tragical death of her son in a freak motorcycle accident, Una decides to take her revenge against the cruel hand of fate. Chance will be her weapon. And she will avenge the forces that took away her child.
Number of Characters: 6
Minimum Number of Actors Required: 4
Length (in Pages): 68
Location: England, present day
Key Words: Chance, grief, lottery, probability, ghosts
Has the Play Been Produced? No
Are the Rights Available? Yes
Has the Play Been Published? No
Award nominations/wins:
Reviews:
JUMBO
Synopsis:
A real-time comic thriller.
In the middle of the night, a mysterious masked intruder breaks into the bedroom of a fractious middle-aged couple and, without explanation, holds them hostage. Fearing for their lives, the couple, by turns, side against the mute intruder and then, slowly, begin to turn on each other. As the unspoken power-play underlying their marriage breaks down, their clashing attitudes towards parental responsibility, gender roles and their differing feelings towards their problematic twin children are laid bare. The mysterious intruder finally removes the mask. And the ‘elephant in the room’ is revealed.
Number of Characters: 3
Minimum Number of Actors Required: 3
Length (in Pages): 58
Location: A bedroom, England, present day
Key Words: real-tim thriller, comedy, terror, gender identity, alcohol, parenting, hostage
Has the Play Been Produced? No
Are the Rights Available? Yes
Has the Play Been Published? No
Award nominations/wins:
Reviews:
Rat House
Synopsis:
City Mayor James is desperate for re-election. Lagging behind in the polls, does he risk defeat by appealing to the left? Would a populist campaign defeat his right-wing rival? An unexpected meeting with the enigmatic 'Piper' takes the decision out of James’s hands. But the consequences threaten more than his political career. He has also put the children of the city of Hamelin at risk.
Rat House is a fast-paced, darkly humorous look at politics and the pursuit of power.
Number of Characters: 5
Minimum Number of Actors Required: 5
Length (in Pages): 74
Location: Town Hall. Present day
Key Words: Pollitics, populism, election, comedy, pied piper
Has the Play Been Produced? Yes
Are the Rights Available? Yes
Has the Play Been Published? No
Award nominations/wins:
Reviews:
Rules of Play
Synopsis:
A play about a play about playing.
During a thatrical production of a play in which an artist is commissioned by a wealthy patron to paint a portrait of his wife, members of the audience question the gender politics they are being offered. As the actors rewrite their lines, audience and cast are drawn into a complex meta-web of role-playing and re-presentation.
Number of Characters: 4
Minimum Number of Actors Required: 4
Length (in Pages): 45
Location: A theatrical stage
Key Words: Gender, Art, meta. comedy. representation, reversal
Has the Play Been Produced? No
Are the Rights Available? Yes
Has the Play Been Published? No
Award nominations/wins:
Reviews:
Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard
Synopsis:
Carol, a community social worker specialising in Older People’s Mental Health, has recently returned to work following the tragic deaths of her husband and only daughter in a car crash. Visiting the home of Ruth Onions to assess her husband Richard for Alzheimer’s, Carol is disturbed to learn that the middle-aged couple still have a young child Billy (‘our late lamb’) bed-ridden upstairs with a chronic illness. Carol reports her concerns to her supervisor but is told she must be mistaken, Richard and Ruth do not have any children.
Suspecting them of playing a cruel and sinister game with her emotions, Carol pays the Onions another visit. This time Ruth is asleep upstairs and Richard’s earlier eccentricities have been replaced by a sombre fatalism. When Carol enquires after Billy’s health. Richard sadly reports that Billy has died. The terrible grief of Carol’s own bereavement suddenly returns and overwhelms her. But Carol’s anguish turns to confusion when Richard shows her a photo of Billy. The photo is a driver’s licence. Billy was eighty years old. Stranger still, Ruth appears and announces she is expecting again.
In the following months, Carol gradually realises what it is she has to do.
Number of Characters: 4
Minimum Number of Actors Required: 4
Length (in Pages): 63
Location: England 2021
Key Words: Dementia, lockdown, mental health
Has the Play Been Produced? No
Are the Rights Available? Yes
Has the Play Been Published? No
Award nominations/wins:
Reviews:
The Fall
Synopsis:
"It’s never the fall that kills you…It’s the landing’. Whoever said that. Is wrong. It’s the fall."
Janet and Liam are happily married until she stops talking to him. And everybody else. In an attempt to diagnose her loss of speech she begins seeing a psychiatrist who starts to probe at a secret buried in the depths of Janet’s psyche, the revelation of which has profound and lasting implications not just for her but the entire family.
View trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4wX0PyujLo&ab_channel=OriginalTheatre
Number of Characters: 5
Minimum Number of Actors Required: 4
Length (in Pages): 69
Location: England, present day
Key Words: Alex Kingston, mental health, Huntington's Disease, play-within-a-play, Adrian Lukis, Charlotte Peters, Digital Theatre, Elective Mutism, Film Online Original Theatre, philosophy, Rehearsed Reading Riverside Studios, Sara Stewart, Tyger Drew-Honey
Has the Play Been Produced? Yes
Are the Rights Available? Yes
Has the Play Been Published? No
Award nominations/wins: Winner of Original Playwrights Award 2022
Reviews:
https://originaltheatre.com/productions/the-fall
"Drew Hewitt’s masterful play examines with wit, humour and searing honesty the complex ideas surrounding free will, love and the painful truths of existence."
www.theatreguidelondon.co.uk/reviews/fall22.htm
"Drew Hewitt's drama is one of those plays that lie to you, leading you to think they're about one thing and then abruptly becoming about something else."
https://www.westendbestfriend.co.uk/news/review-the-fall-original-theatre-online
"The Fall deals with a serious topic, using just the right amount of humour and remaining balanced.
A story of love, pain and truthful consequence.
**** Four stars"
https://mytheatremates.com/fall-original-theatre-online-show
'Quirky & complex piece':
https://www.thereviewshub.com/the-fall-original-theatre-riverside-studios/