Emma is a playwright: her play The Defamation of Cicely Lee is the recent winner of the 2019 'Shakespeare's New Contemporaries' competition, and was due to be staged at the American Shakespeare Center in May 2020 (though has been postponed due to COVID-19). Emma is the first British playwright to win the competition, which invites playwrights to create 'companion plays' to Shakespeare's canon.
The Defamation of Cicely Lee is inspired by Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. In Corbridge in 1611, maidservant Cicely Lee is accused of committing adultery with her former master. What is the truth of it – and will Cicely’s voice be heard? The Defamation of Cicely Lee puts Cymbeline in conversation with the #MeToo era, and asks what we inherit from the past, and how telling our stories can create a more equal future.
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Emma's previous work includes Shakespeare's Sister , which is published and licensed by Samuel French, and received its international premiere at the American Shakespeare Center in Spring 2017 (dir. Jim Warren). Shakespeare's Sister is a period drama: inspired by the tale told by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own, it imagines the story of aspiring playwright Judith Shakespeare, who runs away to London to join the players, and tries to stage her play in difficult and dangerous circumstances. Shakespeare's Sister won the Masterclass 'Pitch Your Play' competition and was performed in staged readings at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and King's College London, as part of the Shakespeare400 celebrations, and staged by third-year drama students at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in Wandsworth, London. It has received school performances at the Vermont Shakespeare Festival, and at Bangs High School, Texas.
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Emma's adaptation of Austen's Emma recently appeared at the American Shakespeare Center's Blackfriars Playhouse, directed by Stephanie Holiday Earl. Emma has also adapted Sense and Sensibility (with Brian McMahon) for the ASC's 2017-2018 US tour (dir. Stephanie Holladay Earl). It is published and licensed by Samuel French, has received amateur productions at Corban University, Oregon, and the Jack M Barrack Hebrew Academy in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. She wrote a comic skit, 'In Search of Shakespeare', for the ASC 2017 Gala. |
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Her short play 'A Puppet Tale' was staged in an Old Vic New Voices showcase (dir. Asia Osborne), and has been published online for Litro magazine; and her short play 'Time to Go' appeared in the chain play 'Ave It (dir. Natalie Ibu) in the Coming Up Later Festival at the Old Vic Tunnels.
Emma is currently working on a play drawing on the true story of the Belvoir Castle witches, Bonfire of Flowers, which she has developed through a workshop at Northern Stage (funded by the Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute) and a staged reading hosted by the London Shakespeare Centre at King's College London.
Emma's academic work informs her playwriting, and her creative practice develops her academic interests: she is working with Lucy Munro (King's College London) on a project on early modern verbatim theatre, collaborating with early modern historians and contemporary verbatim theatre practitioners to explore ways of re-creating the lost play Keep the Widow Waking.
Press
The Defamation of Cicely Lee
https://www.livingnorth.com/northeast/people-places/american-shakespeare-centers-first-british-winner
newsvirginian.com/entertainment/new-play-debuting-in-staunton-tackles-powerful-life-themes/article_b86b2c46-98b0-52e8-8988-1f2db98bfffe.html
Shakespeare's Sister
www.thestage.co.uk/advice/2016/best-books-for-theatre-professionals-may-9/
www.theparagonjournal.com/single-post/2017/04/09/“Prostitute-to-the-Pen”-Emma-Whipday’s-Opening-Run-of-Her-Play-Shakespeare’s-Sister
http://www.marybaldwin.edu/shakespeare/2017/03/02/shared-light-shakespeares-sister/
www.shakespeareances.com/willpower/nonshakespeare/Shakespeare_Sister-01-ASC17.html
http://wvtf.org/post/shakespeares-sister-takes-bow-blackfriars [Radio]
http://digital.vpr.net/post/vermont-shakespeare-festivals-salon-series-breaks-through-fourth-wall#stream/0
www.londontheatre1.com/reviews/review-of-shakespeares-sister-at-the-courtyard-theatre/
Emma
www.broadwayworld.com/norfolk/article/30th-Anniversary-Artistic-Year-Begins-At-Blackfriars-Playhouse-20180618
Sense and Sensibility
http://www.playbill.com/article/shakespeare-in-love-tops-most-produced-plays-of-20172018
http://www.americantheatre.org/2017/09/21/the-top-10-most-produced-plays-of-the-2017-18-season/
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