Eight short plays, commissioned and developed as part of the Women Centre Stage Festival, that together demonstrate the range, depth and richness of women's writing for the stage. Selected by Sue Parrish, Artistic Director of Sphinx Theatre, these plays offer a wide variety of rewarding roles for women, and are perfect for schools, youth groups and theatre companies to perform. How to Not Sink by Georgia Christou looks at duty, love and dependency across three generations of women. In Wilderness by April De Angelis, a patient and her psychiatrist head into the wilderness to find out how sane any of us really are. In Chloe Todd Fordham's The Nightclub, three very different women at a gay nightclub in Orlando are caught up in a terrifying hate crime. Fucking Feminists by Rose Lewenstein is a fiercely funny investigation of what feminism means, and what it has become. Winsome Pinnock's Tituba is a one-woman show about Tituba Indian, the enslaved woman who played a central role in the seventeenth-century Salem Witch Trials. In The Road to Huntsville by Stephanie Ridings, a writer researching women who fall in love with men on death row finds herself crossing the line. White Lead by Jessica Sian explores the expectations and responsibilities of being an artist and a woman. In What is the Custom of Your Grief? by Timberlake Wertenbaker, an English schoolgirl whose brother has been killed on active duty in Afghanistan is befriended online by an Afghan girl. Sphinx Theatre has been at the vanguard of promoting, advocating and inspiring women in the arts through productions, conferences and research for more than forty years.

I slip into Thandi's bed in the night. I crack her ribs and climb deep inside her chest So I never have to leave. Johannesburg. 2014. Summer. Yolandi is listening to rap-rave music and helping her brother bust parts from her teacher's car. Thandi is swotting for her exams and keeping well away from any distractions. In the stifling heat, two teenagers collide. Downing Klipdrift brandy, they create an alliance away from everything else. But scars take time to heal and, as the thunder threatens to strike, the real world crashes in. Set in the eighteenth year of South Africa's democracy a tender coming-of-age story for a nation and its youth. Following a rehearsed reading at HighTide Festival in 2013, Klippies by South African playwright Jessica Sian received its world premiere at Southwark Playhouse, London, on 13 May 2015.