Taking the Stage 2024 - In A Key of Her Own

By Suzette Coon

In 1846 it is taboo for women to be professional composers and to play to the general public and  so the great composer Fanny Mendelssohn’s music is published under her brother’s name.

In 2015 an A Level music student is shocked to discover not a single female composer on the Edexcel  A Level Music syllabus. Both women set out to change the course of history. Inspired by true events.

Suzette Coon - Playwright & Director

Suzette Coon is a playwright and theatre maker living and working in London. Her plays have shown at theatres including Southwark Playhouse, Arcola Theatre, Theatre 503, amongst others. Suzette has been long-listed and short-listed numerous times for BBC Writersroom and has been selected for the Criterion Writing Programme and the Sphinx Theatre’s Sphinx30 Lab, a development programme which supports female British playwrights with mentoring and a seed commission to create new work for the main stage. For Sphinx she developed ‘A Jewish Love Story’ about three generations of Jewish women in England and it was supported by Watford Palace Theatre and Arts Council England. Most recently her play The History of Animals received development at Omnibus Theatre and her new play Killer Whale was commissioned by A Million Fred Productions for a UK tour.

Suzette’s theatre company Little Pieces of Gold was established in 2010, dedicated to championing and producing new writing. Little Pieces of Gold has staged over 400 new short plays, facilitated longterm creative collaborations for writers and directors, and facilitated literary agent representation for playwrights. It has a strong track record of showcasing the work of under-represented writers, with over a thousand writers submitting their work each year through an open submission process. In 2020 ‘Short Plays with Great Plays for Women’, an anthology of 22 short plays by women, with a foreword by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, was published by Routledge Books in 2020 both in the UK and abroad.

Suzette tutors in playwriting. She has tutored and mentored at various colleges, has been a mentor on the Royal Central School of Drama’s MA/MFA Writing for Stage & Broadcast Media, and runs affordable playwriting workshops for aspiring writers.
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Jonathan Forrester

Jonathan Forrester is an actor and singer whose recent credits include: Fiddler on the Roof (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre), Solomon (solo show - various venues), Julius Caesar (Cambridge Shakespeare Festival), The Tempest (Cambridge Shakespeare Festival) and various new writing festivals and productions. He trained at Drama Studio London.

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Rebecca Rayne

Rebecca’s recent credits include: ‘Break A Leg Babe’ (Museum of Comedy), ‘Once Upon A Whispering Wood’ (Theatre Royal Brighton), ‘Stick Man’ (UK Tour), ‘A Christmas Carol’ (The Globe Players) ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’ (Cambridge Shakespeare Festival), ‘The Wolves of Willoughby Chase’ (Brockley Jack Studio Theatre). Rebecca trained at Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts.

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James Percy-Smith

James originally trained at Drama Centre London and Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, going on to perform in a wide range of projects across the theatre, film and voice-over industry. Credits include Lady Bracknell in an Italian tour of The Importance of Being Earnest and Nick in the independent award-winning Norwegian  film Chronos.

In A Key of Her Own

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