Writing with Light

Dr Helen Newall is a Reader in Performing Arts at Edge Hill University. As a playwright her work includes: The Spring Stone, an opera performed in Chester Cathedral; Alastair’s Cat, the Millennium Dome; Light of the World: New Mystery Plays, JC 2000 Millennium Project; new libretto for The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Carl Davis, The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra; A Thousand and One Nights, The Icarus Game, The Glastonbury Tales, Cheshire Youth Theatre; Big Nose, Beowulf, Frankenstein, as writer-in-residence at The Chester Gateway Theatre; Remote Control, HTV-West Television Workshop; Dumisani’s Drum, Action Transport Theatre Company; The Great Gromboolian Plain, Hampshire County Youth Theatre; Anthem for Doomed Youth, Grimms’ Tales, Shoah, Another Sun, The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton. She is currently the Writer-in-Residence with TiQ (http://theatreinthequarter.co.uk/) for whom she has written: Sweet Sixteen; Silent Night; Home For Christmas; James; Forgotten Fortress; and A Jacobean Christmas, the latter commissioned by Hampton Court Palace for the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible.

She makes graphic design, digital imagery, scenography and experimental narratives for projection and performance, including: stills and animated images for 4D Creative (4dcreative.co.uk); Orpheus (2008), The Book of the Dead (2009), Edge Hill University; A View from the Hill, The Brindley Arts Centre, Runcorn (2009); Sounds & Visions shown in Munich, and published online at www.experimentsandintensities.com, University of Winchester (2010); and performance projection for TiQ’s Chester production of A Christmas Carol in 2012; The Snow Queen for 2013 is forthcoming. She makes sound and visual installation work, including Blodeuwedd and Fairy Tale Not Yet Written for The Secret Light Garden, Picton Castle, Pembrokeshire (2010, 2011). Her exhibition of photography, with dancer Mark Edward, Dying Swans and Dragged Up Dames, is currently on at The Arts Centre, EHU, Ormskirk.

She is a co-author of The Road to Somewhere: A Creative Writing Companion  with Robert Graham and Heather Leach, the second edition of which is out shortly! (2007, 2013, Palgrave Macmillan)