Isla Cowan
IASH/Traverse Creative Fellowship 2024
Isla Cowan is a playwright, performer, and director, from Edinburgh. Isla specialises in making ecofeminist theatre, and is committed to exploring issues of class, gender, and ecology in her work. Isla was winner of the 2022 Assembly ART Award and the 2021 Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize for her acclaimed monologue play She Wolf, and nominated for the 2022 Filipa Bragança Award for best female solo performance. Isla’s plays have also been recently shortlisted for the St Andrews Playwriting Award and the Phil Fox Award.
Playwriting credits include, To the Bone (Pitlochry Festival Theatre), She Wolf (Assembly Roxy), Progress Review (Stellar Quines, Traverse Theatre), Alright Sunshine (A Play, A Pie and A Pint, Òran Mór), And… And… And… (Strange Town Touring Company, Traverse Theatre), Jack and the Beanstalk (Hopscotch Theatre Company), Daphne, or Hellfire (Pleasance), and Sno Wite and the Seven Dickensians (Strange Town, Scottish Storytelling Centre), amongst others.
Whilst Isla performs and directs much of her own work, she also has a distinct directorial practice and was recently Associate Director on the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Kidnapped, and Assistant Director on The Duchess [of Malfi] (Royal Lyceum / Citizens Theatre), GUT (National Theatre of Scotland / Traverse Theatre), and Ben-Hur (Reading Rep). Isla also makes digital and audio theatre, previously working on projects with Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, Strange Town, and Scottish Youth Theatre.
Project:
Whilst in residence at IASH and the Traverse Theatre, Isla will be developing a new play about insects, apocalypse, and two women on the run. Isla will be conducting research within the contexts of the Environmental Humanities, Entomology, Anthropology, and Agriculture. Exploring contemporary ecological issues surrounding farming and pollination practices, Isla’s play will ask important questions about interspecies relationships, about famine and fertility, science and survival, set against a dramatic backdrop of capitalist ruins.
You can read more about Isla’s work here: www.islacowan.com