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 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). While Isla performs and directs much of her own work, she was also recently Assistant Director on GUT (Traverse/National Theatre of Scotland, 2018) and The Duchess [of Malfi] (Lyceum/Citizens, 2019). In 2019, Isla was selected as one of four playwrights to be mentored at Hampstead Theatre as part of the INSPIRE programme.
In 2020, Isla's work made the Top 100 for Soho Theatre's Verity Bargate Award and was Shortlisted for Outside Edge Theatre's Phil Fox Award.
Isla is currently working on a brand new solo show, She-Wolf, which explores speciesism, capitalism and womanhood, in an exciting combination of monologue and physical theatre.
