Zennor by Lamorna Ash (2015)
The very first Oxford University student production at The North Wall became Zennor, a semi-devised production from then English student Lamorna Ash.
The Oxford Student previewed the show, noting the play’s background in improvisation. Before anything was written, the actor’s spent two weeks improvising with director Sammy Glover, developing character and setting before Lamorna developed the script. The later review of the production provides more sense of the plot: ‘the main story follows Jen, who, after years away, has returned home to her dying mother in Cornwall; there she finds former lover Matthew and in the strange, unsettling atmosphere of the village of Zennor, they re-open old wounds and consider whether their story together has really come to an end.’ All that alongside ‘Celtic folklore’ and ‘climate change’!
In the decade since, Lamorna Ash has developed a varied career as a writer and journalist, with a column in The New Statesman. She’s returned to the Cornish setting of Zennor: her first book, Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town, won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2021. William Dalrymple proclaimed her ‘a new star of non-fiction’.
Sammy Glover has become an ever-rising theatre director, from Baby in the Mirror (Edinburgh Fringe 2025) to Dear Young Monsters (Soho Theatre, 2015). They co-created the sell-out devised show The Last Show Before We Die with fellow Oxford graduates The Hotter Project. Moreover, they’ve assisted the work of leading theatre directors Alexander Zeldin and Rebecca Frecknall.
“one of the most exciting shows to come out of Oxford this year…if you can stomach the cycle to Summertown and back”
Colin & Katya by Jack Clover (2016)
East meets west. Essex meets Ukraine. Colin meets Katya. In a world of online profiles and international relationships, can love conquer all against a backdrop of desperation and kitsch?
Jack Clover developed Colin & Katya from an entry into the freshers drama competition Cuppers. It explored the relationship between Essex-born Colin and Ukrainian Katya, which develops online before Katya travels to the UK to meet in person. Around that story blends physical theatre and a live band, with songs sung in Russian. The Cherwell described it as ‘a spectacular production’, though the review from The Oxford Student was more hesitant it still found the play ‘entertaining’, ‘adventurous’ and ‘artistic’.
A recording of ‘Infinity Mark’, the final song in the play.
Since graduating, Jack Clover has become a freelance writer, director and translator working in the UK and Ukraine, developing theatre Edinburgh, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, Prague and elsewhere. From its cast, Georgia Bruce has become a Bruntwood Prize nominated playwright and actor, Tom Penn an actor, clown and composer and Ell Potter the co-founder of award-winning duo The Hotter Project.
“Now in its second year, the North Wall Theatre’s single slot for new student writing is shaping up to be one of the highlights of the year in student drama.”
Lights Over Tesco Car Park by Jack Bradfield (2016)
Basically: Robert reported lights over the Tesco car park. Then he told us an alien was coming to stay in his spare room. With the help of some historical abduction stories, a latex alien mask and a bucket of flying saucers, we're working out whether to believe him. Maybe this is a good place to believe him? A docu-comedy for the post-truth age.
Written and directed by Jack Bradfield, Lights Over Tesco Carpark marked the first production of then student company Poltergeist Theatre. The reviews for the original North Wall production from The Oxford Student and Oxford Opening Night are remarkably muted for a show which would go on to such rare success. After its student premiere, Poltergeist took the play to The National Student Drama Festival, before touring professionally to HOME Manchester, New Diorama Theatre, an Edinburgh Fringe run with The Pleasance and a return trip to The North Wall. The Stage called this now ★★★★ production ‘brilliantly inventive’. Then, icing-on-cake came by winning The Samuel French New Play Award for 2018. You can even buy the published play script!
The North Wall allowed this student company to transition into professional work. Poltergeist, described by The Guardian as ‘one of the UK’s best young theatre companies’, have made three further plays together, alongside active freelance careers in the arts. They remain an associate company with The North Wall.
The full recording of ‘Lights Over Tesco Car Park’, live-streamed in Lockdown with New Diorama Theatre.
“The team met through their university’s drama society and cemented their relationship at the North Wall theatre, where they have recently been made an associate company. All bar one have now graduated. The challenge, as for so many young companies, will be to find a way to keep the ties from snapping as the distance between them stretches.”
Hereafter by Chloë Lawrence-Taylor (2018)
Struggling to come to terms with the loss of her husband, Eva is plunged into a grief-stricken limbo. Her present is non-existent; her sense of self is bound to her past, to her loss, to what can never be again […] Welcomed back to work with a rather crudely disguised ultimatum, Eva becomes the human guinea pig in an experiment into VR Bereavement Therapy. As her memories disintegrate and her grief is taken for gold, life and afterlife collide.
Taking the slot in 2018, Hereafter was the debut play of Chloë Lawrence-Taylor, a near-future story imagining a virtual reality solution to grief. The Oxford Student had a mixed response, feeling the script needed to ‘probe some of its themes a bit further’. However, since her debut as a student Chloë has had four further plays performed, reaching the longlist for The Bruntwood Prize in 2022 with True Cry. Her most recent play, Personal Values was staged at The Hampstead Theatre in 2025 and published by Nick Hern Books.
“Well-executed, thoroughly thought out and sharply acted, Hereafter is worth the trek to the Land’s End that is the North Wall.”
