Talent

afshan d’souza-lodhi was born in Dubai and forged in Manchester. She is a writer of scripts and poetry. Her work has been performed and translated into numerous languages across the world. afshan was a 2020 LabFellow for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University and took her one-person show ‘How To Eat Mangoes’ to Washington DC in 2022. In 2021, afshan was a Sky Writes writer-in-residence for Rotherham, a partnership between Sky Studios and New Writing North. Last year, she was part of the Royal Exchange and WarnerMedia writers exchange programme and was an Oldham Coliseum artist-in-residence. afshan was selected as one of the BAFTA BFI Flare mentees for 2022, and has developed a TV series with Sky Studios. She is also developing a TV series with co-writer Joe Willis and PDA films. The pilot ’Its My Party...' was chosen for the SKY Table Reads programme. A TV pilot she wrote called Chop Chop, based on her stage play with the same name, was selected as part of the second annual #MuslimList, a curated list of the most promising unmade scripts from Muslim writers in Hollywood that reside on The Black List. This year, afshan was one of the first to receive The National Theatre's Peter Shaffer 2022 Commission in conjunction with The Royal Exchange Theatre. As well as her own writing, afshan is keen to develop other younger and emerging artists and sits on the boards of Manchester Literature Festival and Pie Radio.

Samuel Rossiter is a queer trans man and mixed-race actor and writer of English/Chinese heritage. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Samuel moved to Manchester (UK) after graduating from university to pursue acting and writing. He has written for the Royal Exchange Theatre (My White Best Friend North 2021, Fright Night 2022) , The Lowry (Shoots Scratch Night 2022) and has had several spoken word commissions from organizations including Channel 4 and the Greater Manchester Artist Hub. In 2022, Samuel was on a writing attachment to the Royal Exchange Theatre and was also longlisted for the Bruntwood Playwriting Competition for his play The Art Of. His ultimate dream is to be TV showrunner and lead actor on his own show.

Stefanie is a mixed raced, working class, neurodivergent, queer playwright and comedy TV writer from and living in Manchester. Not only has she managed to successfully be a part of every minority group, she’s also been a part of a multitude of prestigious writing companies that consist of Tamasha playwrights in 2017, Royal Court's Intro to Writing in 2019, and Box of Tricks' year-long playbox scheme PlayBox 2021-22. She has written for Scratch nights and comedy nights in London and Manchester theatres, as well as touring her first play Scribbles at Edinburgh Fringe festival and Battersea Arts Centre in London. Her second play That Time We Got High was shortlisted for Channel 4stories, Kudos and Royal Court fellowship and longlisted for Women's Playwriting award. She has written a new audio drama BABY MAMA, for Tamasha & Holy Mountain which was aired on local radios. Stefanie is developing her new play Danesha The ??? (pending title) with Box of Tricks, which was longlisted for Papatango playwriting prize. She has also written articles for GUM Magazine, as well as monologues for Tamasha’s Hear Me Now & Virtual Collaborators project. Stef has recently completed Royal Exchange’s new six month writing exchange programme in partnership with WarnerMedia and is developing her first tv pilot script. Stefanie likes to fuse dry and fast paced wit with abstract absurdism. Stef takes inspiration from her favourite comedies; Peep Show, Broad City, Spaced, Thick of It, Arrested Development and of course Succession <3 Stefanie is represented by Maddie O’Dwyer at Berlin Associates.