WRITING
Most of my writing has taken the form of scripts for theatre and television, but has also included short stories for live storytelling, standup comedy for drag performances, and I’m currently dabbling in children’s fiction too.
Even though I mostly write under my drag name, not everything I write is about drag. Rather, the common threads that run through all my projects are a sense of humour, camp, whimsy, and imagination - which is why an extravagant name like Lady Aria Grey feels appropriate for everything.
Below are some of my favourite writing projects to date:
PJ MASKS
I’ve written three episodes on the new season of PJ Masks: Power Heroes, an animated Disney kids show, which aired globally in 2023. They’re available on Disney+!
VAGUE!
Vague! is an original drag comedy series, set in the world of fashion, in a parallel drag universe. The pilot won the 2020 Edinburgh TV Festival New Voice Award for Best Comedy Script, and subsequently was optioned by a major comedy production company and developed for nine months through the first Covid lockdown. It was also a semi-finalist for the 2022 Hollyshorts Film Festival Screenplay Competition in Los Angeles.
The pilot script and pitch deck are currently unattached and available on request.
GREY WIDOW
Grey Widow is a monologue play, which I wrote for myself to perform. In it, Lady Aria tells the supernatural and debaucherous story of her turbulent marriage to, and subsequent murder of, her absolute wanker of a husband. She’s also being haunted by his ghost - it’s a whole thing.
Winner of the 2019 London Horror Festival Playwriting Competition, and subsequently performed at the King’s Head Theatre in 2022, and VAULT Festival in 2023.
The work-in-progress playtext is available to purchase from Junkets Publisher, and the show was reviewed by Gay Times, Theatre Weekly, and Reviews Hub.
THE WITCH IN THE IVORY TOWER
Inspired by the transphobic rhetoric of my once-favourite author, JK Rowling, this short story was written partly for children, and partly for the adults who will hopefully read it to them.
Originally commissioned by the University of Leicester’s Attenborough Arts Centre to be read live as part of their ‘Unexpected Tales’ series, the live performance ultimately got cancelled due to Covid, so I instead illustrated and recorded it myself during lockdown.
The story is free to watch on Instagram.
THE PITCH
An almost-musical, co-written and performed with Roland Perold in Cape Town in 2017.
Winner of the 2017 WGSA (Writers Guild of South Africa) Muse Award for Best Stage Play. This show had puppets, original music, and a paper thin plot - but god was it camp!
DANDELIONS AND STONES
I co-wrote this play with Jessica McCarthy, AKA Lady Anjelica MacDeath, who is simultaneously my dear friend, my little kitten, my lady Dracula, my drag daughter, and my drag mother (it’s a long story).
Dandelions and Stones was born because Lady Anjelica wanted to write about drag and death in order to process a near-death experience she had had several years earlier, but was struggling to put pen to paper. I wrote the first few pages as an experiment, which then served as a launch pad for Lady Anjelica to write the next chunk of it… and suddenly after a whirlwind of cheesecake-brainstorms, we had written a play.
LADY ARIA GREY EXPLAINS
A YouTube series explaining academic and social justice concepts in layman’s terms, with the use of helpful diagrams.
I wrote, crowdfunded, and shot 10 episodes of this series with the help of some dear and very patient friends. The language and politics of most of these videos is outdated now, but some of them still hold up!
UHM…
Co-created and -written with my graduating class of Theatre Makers at UCT (University of Cape Town) in 2014, this little play is one I am very proud of. We originally wrote it to take to the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, where it did so well that it was picked up for a professional run at Cape Town’s Artscape Theatre, and then invited to the 2015 ABSA Klein Karoo Nasionele Kunstefees (an Afrikaans theatre festival).
Uhm… tells the story of a young Xhosa girl, Coceka, who is haunted by the ghosts of Cecil John Rhodes, Queen Victoria, and Sol Plaatje, as they wage a war over her soul.
The playtext is available for purchase from Junkets Publisher.
Clockwise from top left: Kathleen Stephens, Jason Jacobs, Sive Gubangxa, Callum Tilbury (Me), Alex McCarthy
FABULOUS NOTHING
The first full play I ever wrote, as my graduating project at drama school. Set inside the brain of a struggling writer being tormented by their own thoughts (long before I’d seen A Strange Loop, I promise!) this play was existential, precocious, and very very bad. But it’s worth sharing for the memories, the photos, and the extremely talented and wonderful cast who are all now very famous actors.
L-R: Tankiso Mamabolo, Jamie-Lee Money, David Viviers, Kiroshan Naidoo, Cleo Raatus