Maya Yousif

About Me: I'm a writer, and a Development Editor at an independent film production company called South of the River Pictures. At university, my playwriting was performed at venues like the Downing Festival of New Writing and the Corpus Playroom. I was also the recipient of the Cambridge Shorts/Fletcher Players New Writing Prize for my short film screenplay, BETH. Since graduating, my play UNGODLY has been performed at the Hen and Chickens theatre in Islington as part of a new writing showcase produced by The Happy Cannibals; a theatre company I'm a co-founder of along with fellow writers Rachel Kitts and Jessica Murdoch. I am hugely inspired by writers like Alice Birch, Caryl Churchill, and Alistair McDowell; all of whom are able to balance their examination of the human condition with formal experimentation. I love theatre which is energetic, funny, messy, and claws at a burning question about how we live today, without handing us any easy answers. I want to write theatre which takes us to dark and difficult places with silliness, wit, and emotional intelligence. I’m drawn to specificity, and idiosyncratic situations which reveal bigger, more existential questions about themes such as faith, repression, political life, monasticism, and shame. I'm currently developing a full length play, and am in the process of writing a short film.