isla cowan
Isla is a Scottish playwright, performer and director, currently based in Edinburgh. She specialises in creating ecofeminist work and believes in theatre that challenges both its audience and its makers.
Isla's most recent work for stage includes, Daphne, or Hellfire (Pleasance and Assembly Roxy, 2019), Sno Wite and the Seven Dickensians ( Strange Town / Scottish Storytelling Centre, 2019 ), The View from Portobello ( Royal Lyceum, 2018 ), BANTER (LYT/Traverse, 2017 ), These Walls (Sweet Venues, 2017 ), Come Back to Bed ( Fitzpatrick Theatre, 2017 ), Lily ( Corpus Playroom, 2016), and poetic solo show, Learning to Live (Espionage @Laughing Horse, 2015). Isla was winner of the Cambridge New Writing Festival in 2017 for her play, Waiting, and has since participated in several writing festivals, including REP STRIPPED (Dundee Rep, 2019). Isla was recently Assistant Director on GUT (Traverse/NTS, 2018) and The Duchess [of Malfi] (Lyceum/Citizens, 2019), and was selected as one of four writers to be mentored at Hampstead Theatre as part of the 2019 Inspire Programme.
Isla's fierce, four-star ecofeminist play, Daphne, or Hellfire, is fresh from performances at The Greenhouse @The Pleasance and Assembly Roxy and will soon be announcing dates for 2020. Isla is also working on a brand new solo show, She-Wolf, which explores speciesism, trauma and folklore, in an exciting combination of monologue, storytelling and physical theatre.
