Taking the Stage 2024 - The Memory Of Snow

Siberia 1918. Months after the revolution in Russia the deposed Tsar and his family are kept under house arrest in Siberia and no one seems to know what to do with them. The Tsar’s four daughters have spent their lives hiding their brother’s illness from the world and clung together after the Rasputin scandal. Now, as their mother’s health declines and their father grows ever more disconnected to the world, they must try and make sense of their own lives and what it means to be the daughters of a man once powerful, now weak and purposeless. All they want is to be young and have fun and maybe find love for the first time but having had to grow up quickly, they are also painfully aware of the huge changes in their own country and for the first time reflect on the lives of everyday Russian citizens in comparison with their own privileged upbringing. The Memory of Snow is about the claustrophobia of being trapped, where your every move is scrutinised and each day could be your last.

Siân Rowland - Playwright

Siân is an education adviser and trainer by day and a playwright and poet by night. Her play about inequality in schools The Cracks was runner up for the Popcorn New Writing Award and her work has been longlisted for the Bruntwood, Hope Mill and Verity Bargate awards. A graduate of the Criterion Writing Scheme, she has had two showcases at this West End theatre. She is a reader for the Funny Women Award and delivers comedy writing workshops for Funny Women. As a late entrant to the world of theatre and playwriting herself, Siân is an advocate for those entering the creative industries in later life. She is thrilled to be part of the Taking The Stage festival 2024.

Erica Miller - Director

Erica trained at the Young Vic and StoneCrabs Theatre. Theatre direction includes: a lie and two truths (Bread and Roses Theatre, Lambeth Fringe), Stray Dogs (Bread and Roses Theatre and Brighton Fringe), Tell It Slant (Hope Theatre), The Lying Kind, Radiant Vermin and Shorties (Ramjam Records), Patience (Black Lives, Black Words at the Bush Theatre), Ashes of Roses and A Poison Tree (The Miniaturists at the Arcola Theatre), The Job and Treading Water (Pleasance Edinburgh) and Meat (Bush Bazaar at  the Bush Theatre). Film direction includes: Lost and Found, A Night of Dogs, A Stepmother Speaks, A Door, A Coin In Somebody Else’s Pocket and two award-winning shorts, Control and ScreenTime. 

She is Co-Artistic Director of Roguegunners Productions and Merry Spinsters Theatre Company.