Elevate Festival – Elevate Shorts

Exeter Northcott has once again commissioned four local playwrights to pen a collection of brand-new short plays, brought to life by a team of directors and actors from across the region. Elevate Shorts is an evening of new writing that puts South-West stories centre stage.  

This year our writers were again selected through our most recent script window. They have been invited to write in response to the stimulus Halloween, Devon, Joy.

The writers

May McEvoy
May is a writer from Dorset. She recently graduated with an MA in Drama Writing from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, and she holds a BA in English from the University of Oxford. Her plays have been performed in Edinburgh and the South West, and her radio play ‘A Dying Fall’ was produced by INK Festival 2026. She is interested in work that asks questions and that confronts the knottiness of experience.

Deen Reinard
Dorchester Arts has been an important platform in the presentation of his work, Durex Machine, 2025; Blackpool Glee, 2026. The Lighthouse, Sherling Studio, Poole, showcasing, Toblerone, 2026. Other plays include, the co-written community play, Promise of Power, 2026, Utopia Theatre, Sheffield; Duck Egg, staged Barons Court Theatre, 2025, and shortlisted, Divide Culture Company, Playwriting Prize, 2025. Selected, Paramount Mentorship Programme, Paramount Studios, 2024. Selected, again, as a writer, Alfred Fagon Mentorship Programme, 2025. In writing, Oladipo Agboluaje continues being a mentor of significance and inspiration. Deen, alumni of Jim Moore School of Theatre, its mantra, ‘TRY not to bore the audience.’

Taylor Ayling
Taylor Ayling is a w/class Bristolian playwright, director, actor trainer and construction site labourer. After obtaining his M.A. In Contemporary Directing Practice from Rose Bruford in 2022 and developing skills as a freelance actor trainer and director, he decided to give himself a job directing by writing a new play. He developed his craft through trial and error and following tried and tested methods of dramatic writing inspired by vastly disparate influences such as French farce, world religion and workplace hierarchies. Taylor’s work circles themes of addiction, recovery and justice; both existential and social.

Izzie Harding-Perrot
Izzie is a writer and actor from Axminster, now based between Devon and London. They are thrilled to be working with the Northcott again, after starring in Romeo and Juliet last summer, and multi-roling in The Jolly Christmas Postman at the Barnfield. Writing includes: Temperance (Nettle Soup Vol: 1 at the Hope Theatre), BOXES (Rural Media/ Pentabus Young Writers 2024), long listed for Channel 4 Regional Writers 2024.
Izzie trained with the Footlights and Marlowe Society whilst studying Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge University. Their projects are driven by a love of the people, stories, and landscapes of the Southwest. 

The directors

Danielle Mcilven
Danielle McIlven is a theatre director and Lecturer in Acting at the University of Plymouth, with a particular interest in new writing and the development of emerging artists. Her directing practice spans new plays, contemporary performance and classical texts, with a focus on collaborative processes that give artists space to take risks and explore new ideas. She has directed and developed work with professional and emerging artists and has extensive experience of working through rehearsal, workshop and devising processes. Danielle holds an MFA in Theatre Directing from Birkbeck, for which she was the resident assistant director at the Citizens Theatre. She is passionate about creating space for new voices and bringing new writing to audiences.

Lara Lawman
Lara is a writer, director, and theatre maker. She makes work in and for the Southwest, including Bristol Old Vic, Tobacco Factory, Theatre Royal Bath and the Bristol Hippodrome, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Exeter Northcott, and beyond to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Pleasance, and the London Coliseum. Lara trained in MA Drama Directing at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Her practice as a director centres on interdisciplinary, visually explosive work that gives audiences space to emotionally connect with the power of live performance. Lara also has a PGCE in Drama and has a wide range of experience in creating work with young people. 

The cast and the plays will be announced soon.

Elevate Festival

This event is part of Elevate Festival, a week-long celebration of new work from South-West artists.

VIEW THE WHOLE PROGRAMME