# Lu Kemp

Lu Kemp is a theatre director and dramaturge. She trained on the Laboratory of Movement course at L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, Paris, and with Anne Bogart’s SITI Company in New York. In March 2016, she was appointed Artistic Director of Perth Theatre in Scotland.

## Theatre

Stage plays directed by Lu Kemp :
| Date | Title | Author | Cast | Synopsis | Theatre company | Notes |
| 28 January 2003 – 15 February 2003 | How to Tell the Truth | Chris Dunkley | Philip Ralph, Damien Goodwin and Daniele Lydon | A story about life behind the headlines | Stephen Joseph Theatre | |
| 20 November 2005 – 11 December 2005 | Almost Blue | Carlo Lucarelli adapted by Chris Dunkley | Benjamin Duke and Eddie Kay | Simon, is blind and suffers from synaesthesia, through which he experiences sound as colours. Alone in his room he surfs the airwaves with his audio-scanner, through which he follows the trail of a murderer with a cold, green voice. | Riverside Studios, Hammersmith | Winner: The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award 2005 |
| 2006 – 2006 | Beautiful Cosmos | Rob Evans, Lu Kemp, Ben Lewis and Sophie Fletcher | | Beautiful Cosmos is set in the apartment of a woman who suddenly finds herself alone. Through her job as a sex text messager she begins to pick up strange messages from truckers, astronauts and a teenage Arizonan boy. Through it all she can't stop hearing the words and remembering the movements of her lover. | Theatre by Design / Tron Theatre, Glasgow | |
| 5 December 2006 – 13 January 2007 | Pinocchio | Rob Evans | Ben Lewis | | Royal Theatre, Northampton | |
| 18 August 2009 – 30 August 2009 | If That's All There Is | | Lucinka Eisler, Giulia Innocenti and Ben Lewis | A surreal, comic look at the strain of organising a wedding, how much we're prepared to endure to find love and happiness, and whether we can ever really know one another. | Inspector Sands Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh | Winner Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Award 2009 Touring Michael Croft Theatre, Alleyn's School (1 March 2010); PATS Dance Studio, University of Surrey (20 October 2010); Nine Theatre, TNT, Beijing (10–14 November 2010); |
| 13 October 2009 – 17 October 2009 | One Thousand Paper Cranes | Abigail Docherty | Veronica Leer and Melody Grove | The true story of two fun-loving Japanese girls who tried to change their destiny by folding pieces of paper. Sadoko and her best friend Chiziko were just two years old when an atomic bomb was dropped on their home town, Hiroshima. Ten years on, a once energetic Sadoko is dying of radiation poisoning and Chiziko is desperate to save her. | Tron Theatre, Glasgow | |
| 4 May 2010 – 8 May 2010 | Julia Innocenti and Rosalind Sydney | Eastwood Park Theatre, Glasgow | | | | |
| 11 May 2010 – 16 May 2010 | Imaginate Festival, Church Hill Theatre Studio, Edinburgh | | | | | |
| 4 August 2011 – 29 August 2011 | Assembly George Square, Edinburgh | | | | | |
| 30 April 2010 | The Next of It | John McCann | | A black comedy, set in County Armagh, about family secrets and the legacy of silence. An old blind woman is digging her grave. She enlists her teenage granddaughter to dig with her, to the disgust of the girl's mother who bans the girl from returning. However, the girl does go back the following day to help her grandmother and in so doing, learns the secret which has driven the family apart with silence and reproaches for as long as she can remember. | Stellar Quines / Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh | |
| 18 May 2010 – 22 May 2010 | Room | Abigail Docherty | Melody Grove | Sarah never leaves her flat. Watching the world outside from her window, she dreams up fantastic experiences and adventures without stepping outside her front door. But today a stranger has come to visit her and he is determined to pull her into the real world again. Sarah, however refuses to leave... | Tron Theatre, Glasgow | |
| 15 July 2010 – 18 July 2010 | The 13 Midnight Challenges of Angelus Diablo | Carl Grose | John Nicholson, Sandy Grierson, Dominic Lawton and Julia Innocenti | A hilarious tale of an unsuccessful actor who sells his soul to the devil in return for an acting part. | Royal Shakespeare Company at Latitude Festival | |
| 29 July 2011 – 30 July 2011 | Encourage the Others | John Donnelly | Grace Adewale, Stephanie Afari, Alexander Austin, Akuc Bol, Caitlin Fitzgerald, Isabelle Holland, Dina Ibrahim, Russie Miessi, Renais Mejeh, Liah Tecle, Josie Roughneen, Joey Jarossi, Maia Clarke and Cedric Belato | | Almeida Theatre |
| 22 October - 11 November 2014 | Bondagers | Sue Glover | Cath Whitefield, Pauline Lockhart, Wendy Seager, Jayd Johnson, Charlene Boyd, Nora Wardell | A tale of female bonded farm labourers in the Scottish Borders. | Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh | |

## Radio plays

Radio Plays Directed or Produced by Lu Kemp :
| Date first broadcast | Play | Author | Cast | Synopsis Awards | Station Series |
| 14 January 2003 | A Rose for Chopin | Lorraine McCann | Richard Greenwood, Michael Perceval Maxwell, Noreen Leighton, Vivienne Dixon and Michael MacKenzie | Devastated after his split from George Sand, Chopin visits Scotland. Escape from Parisian gossip is welcome, but the attention of the locals is not. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 17 March 2003 | Little Black Dress: What to Wear in the Absence of Light | Hannah McGill | Read by Jo James | Camilla opens her eyes to find she has not, as she has hoped, achieved eternal peace, but rather appears to have landed in her very own personalised hell – the parental home. | BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week |
| 18 March 2003 | Little Black Dress: The Difference | Sian Preece | Read by Aled Pugh | Mark's band are given a shot at fame, and his younger sister is on hand to create their look. | BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week |
| 19 March 2003 | Little Black Dress: Alma Martyr | Susie Maguire | Read by Susie Maguire | Radiating success, Midge wants to give her old friends a day out to remember. They deserve it. | BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week |
| 20 March 2003 | Little Black Dress: Dancing in the Dark | Rosemary Goring | Read by James MacPherson | Helen is surprised by the effect a little black dress has on her normally inattentive husband. | BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week |
| 21 March 2003 | Little Black Dress: Les Pompes Funèbres | Susie Maguire | Read by Gayanne Potter | Kate has been prepared for the death of her father, but not for his dying in France. How does one display grief in a foreign language? | BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week |
| 31 March 2003 | The Life Trainer | Sophie McCook | Julie Austin, Carol Ann Crawford, Janette Fogo, Steven McNicoll, Jenny Ryan and Nick Underwood | Kelly is staring down the barrel of her thirtieth birthday. Life is making her panic. If only she could do it all again, she'd make the right choices, especially in love. When Kelly meets Faith, a personal Life Trainer, Faith offers her the opportunity to redo the bits she got wrong the first time around. Given the chance - would you? | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 3 July 2003 | The Chronycle | John Hancox | Juliet Cadzow, Alec Heggie, Irene MacDougall, Keith MacPherson and Clare Yuille | In the final years of his life, Charles Rennie Mackintosh was living in obscurity in France with his wife Margaret MacDonald. As Mackintosh rediscovered the joy of painting, Margaret, also an artist, was trying to come to terms with the tragic loss of her sister, Frances. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 8 December 2003 – 19 December 2003 | One Man's Justice | Akira Yoshimura | Read by Nicholas Farrell | The Potsdam Agreement, which was signed the previous August, bought the war to an end and humiliation and economic depression to Japan. Having received a cryptic message from an ex-colleague, Takuya Kiyohara is compelled to return to his former headquarters to receive instructions. | BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime |
| 8 January 2004 | Bampot Central | Christopher Brookmyre | Douglas Henshall, David Begg, Richard Gordon, Murdo MacLeod, Sheila Donald, Monica Gibb, John Paul Hurley, Tony Kearney, Steven McNicoll, Michael Moreland, Gayanne Potter and Paul Young | It's the Edinburgh Fringe, not Parlabane's favourite time of year. To add insult to injury, Parlabane has just walked into one of the worst conceived armed robberies he's ever had the pleasure to attend. Tommy and Jyzer appear to have been set up, not that they are aware of that fact. Holding up a Post Office in order to lay their hands on that mythical creature The Insurance Bond has to be their least smart move to date. But they can still make a few more along the way. | BBC Radio 3 The Wire |
| 27 February 2004 | Different Planes | Tamsin Oglesby | Charles Edwards, Teresa Gallagher, Mike Harris, Togo Igawa, Karl Johnson, Eiji Kusuhara, Sarah Lam and Matthew Marsh | Within days of each other two planes crash: one into the Mogami River in Japan, the other into a field of American poppies. Behind the press conferences and public enquiries, the two heads of the airlines attempt to reconcile their public responsibilities with the private lives of their families. | BBC Radio 4 Friday Play |
| 29 March 2004 | Nude, Untitled | Gowan Calder | Steven Cartwright, Julie Duncanson, Kath Howden, Tony Kearney, Vicki Liddelle and Jenny Ryan | When the art college threatens to close down sections of its drawing and painting school – in favour of more economically viable departments – the life models' jobs come under threat. Someone has to take a stand. And if it's in the buff, so be it. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 13 May 2004 | The Cenci Family | Lizzie Hopley | Sally Hawkins, Peter Innes, Owen Teale, Gerrard McArthur, Daniel Evans and Ronald Pickup | Rome, 1599. A young girl, Beatrice Cenci, stands trial for the murder of her father Francesco Cenci, the first Godfather of the Italian Mafia. Nominated for a Sony Radio Academy Award | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 24 May 2004 | 15 Minutes to Go: Beautiful Day | Anne Donovan | Gabriel Quigley, William Barlow, Alexandra Mathie and Chris Young | A woman finds herself stuck in a traffic jam in the Clyde Tunnel. Nothing unusual in that – until God intervenes to tell her she's only got fifteen minutes to live. | BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Drama |
| 25 May 2004 | 15 Minutes to Go: Viper in the Nest | Hannah McGill | Gabriel Quigley, Crawford Logan, Grant O'Rourke, Alexandra Mathie and William Barlow | Within the next fifteen minutes the verdict on the trial of a young American girl is about to be announced. In a prestigious boarding school in Scotland, Martin is desperate to hear the outcome – his own fate he feels is inextricably bound up with hers. | BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Drama |
| 2 June 2004 | Visiting Time | Aileen Ritchie | Louise Goodall, Eileen McCallum, Colette O'Neil, Wendy Seager, Simon Tait and Jimmy Yuill | Darkly comic observational drama about the tentative friendship between two middle-aged carers who meet in hospital while visiting their elderly mothers. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 7 June 2004 – 18 June 2004 | The Rainbow | D.H. Lawrence abridged by Linda Cracknell | | The Rainbow explores the passionate lives of three generations of the Brangwen family of Nottinghamshire from the 1840s to the early years of the twentieth century. | BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime |
| 21 June 2004 – 25 June 2004 | The Trading Game | Lorraine McCann | Donald Cameron, Lisa Gardner, Tamara Kennedy, John Kielty, Steven Cartwright, Emma Currie, John Shedden, William Barlow, Sheila Donald and Greg Powrie | LETS is a system of bartering which operates in towns and cities across Britain. These five comic dramas are inspired by a series of trades between strangers. | BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Drama |
| 27 June 2004 | Uncle Varick | John Byrne | Paul Young, Sandy Neilson, Richard Greenwood, Robert Jack, Vicki Masson, Selina Boyack, Sheila Donald, John Shedden and Anne Lacey | In the mid-sixties Uncle Varick and his niece Shona have been running the estate, farm and the brewery in the remote North East of Scotland for the benefit of Varick's brother-in-law, the literary critic and TV pundit Sandy Sheridan. When Sandy decides to retire to the estate with his young wife Elaine, their presence throws the lives of the inhabitants into disarray. Uncle Varick is desperate having, he believes, surrendered his chance at life and love for the benefit of a man he now knows to be a charlatan | BBC Radio 3 Drama on 3 |
| 12 July 2004 – 16 July 2004 | Selected Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer | Isaac Bashevis Singer | Read by Henry Goodman | A week of short stories by the master Yiddish storyteller, to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth: The Re-encounter; A Quotation from Klopstock; Taibele and her Demon; Neighbours; and The Bird. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Reading |
| 14 July 2004 | Are You Sure? | Alexis Zegerman | Susan Engel, Teresa Gallagher and Karl Johnson | In his declining years, Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer is approached by a young girl, Deborah, who wishes to drive him to his lectures at the university in exchange for attending his course free of charge. Her boldness pays off and the two embark on a robust and intimate relationship. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 6 September 2004 | The Big Sneeze: Sneeze on Monday, Sneeze for Danger | Val McDermid | | Someone on the inside is covering Greg Thomas's back. The local drugs baron has been charged numerous times but somehow he never gets brought to book. And it's Chrissie's job to find out who's reaping the rewards. Listening in to Thomas's apartment one night, Chrissie hears nothing remarkable except for a violent sneezing fit. In the morning Thomas is found dead. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Reading |
| 7 September 2004 | The Big Sneeze: Sneeze on Tuesday, Kiss a Stranger | Tim Crouch | | Until the age of 29 Tim was blind. When he was a baby a small sycamore seed twirled its way down to his cot in the garden, he clutched it and shoved it up his tiny nostrils where the seed lodged itself – between his anterior of his brain and the optic nerve – for 29 years. And nobody knew it was there. This is the seeds story. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Reading |
| 8 September 2004 | The Big Sneeze: Sneeze on Wednesday, Get a Letter | Linda Cracknell | | Having received a photo of his grandson George sits down to write a letter to his son. A letter he imagines that might bridge the gap of years between them. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Reading |
| 9 September 2004 | The Big Sneeze: Sneeze on Thursday, Something Better | Hannah McGill | | Gwendoline the puppy is sick. There is no doubt about it. She's sneezing blood on the studio floor. There's only one thing for it: a new puppy must be found, and the producers just have to hope that the children won't notice. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Reading |
| 10 September 2004 | The Big Sneeze: Sneeze on Friday, Sneeze for Sorrow, See Your Sweetheart Tomorrow | Ruth Thomas | Read by Catherine Shepherd | Landing a Saturday job in the local pet shop will finally allow Linda to get close to Mark Brown. If she lands it. She can't seem to get through the interview for sneezing. Is it the cuttlefish she's allergic to? The parakeets? Or is it something that is going to make their relationship even more unfeasible than it already is? | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Reading |
| 20 November 2004 | Dr Korczak's Example | David Greig | Alexander Morton, Vicki Liddelle, Simon Donaldson, Sandy Neilson, Anthony Hutcheson, Matthew Zajac, Ewan Macleod, Fergus Hitchcock, Finn Hitchcock, Katie Neville and Sarah-Beth Neville | Based on the true story of Janusz Korczak, best-selling children's novelist, paediatrician and social experimenter, who set up a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw and ran it as a children's democracy. In this play, when the Nazis close in on Warsaw, Korczak and the children are forced to move into the ghetto – stretching Korczak's pacifist ideals to the limit. But the doctor's values are threatened not only by the Nazi regime but by the arrival of a young Jewish boy who believes in fighting back. | BBC Radio 4 Saturday Play |
| 29 November 2004 | Double Acts: Scissors and Ribbon Repeated as The Mecklington Miracle | Hannah McGill and Rachel McGill | Martin Hyder, Andrew Mayer, David Sant, Christine Bottomley and Charlie Hayes | Big conspiracy comes to a small town in this light-hearted comedy. The town's local hero hasn't stepped out of her house for years until Pedro arrives from Columbia determined to make a miracle happen in Mecklington. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 17 December 2004 | The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro | Paul Theroux | Robert Jack, Angus Macinnes, Finlay Welsh, Vivienne Dixon, Lesley Hart and Frances Thorburn | A dark, seductive tale of ambition and desire set in Taormina, Sicily. Aged 60, successful, American painter Gilford Mariner returns to the Golden Hotel, a place he has not visited since he was a young man of twenty. Back then, he was enchanted by DH Lawrence's poem Snake, and willing to take dangerous risks. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 3 March 2005 | The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch | Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, adapted by Neil Gaiman Music by Dave McKean and Ashley Slater | Richard Dillane, Alexander Morton, Hugh Dickson, Karl Johnson, Jonathan Bee, Rachel Atkins, Susan Jameson, Stuart McLoughlin, Geoff Felix and Frankie Dean | A small boy goes to stay with his grandparents in Southsea, spending his days at his grandfather's failed arcade on the seafront. When Swatchell, a Punch and Judy professor, sets up his booth in the arcade the boy becomes fascinated by the story played out by these strange violent wooden puppets – particularly when strange parallels start to develop between the story of Mr. Punch and events in his own family's life. | BBC Radio 3 The Wire |
| 26 March 2005 | The Distant Echo | Val McDermid dramatised for radio by Bert Coules | Jimmy Chisholm, Steven Cartwright, Simon Donaldson, Matthew Pidgeon, John Paul Hurley, Kirsten Murray, Claire Knight, Gayanne Potter, Crawford Logan and Michael Nardone | Four students stumble upon the body of a dead girl, in the snow, late one night. Twenty-five years later the police mount a cold case review of the unsolved case, and the friends finally have an opportunity to clear their names once and for all. However, when one of them dies in a suspicious house fire, and another in a burglary gone bad, it seems someone is still pursuing their own brand of justice. If the remaining two are to avoid becoming the next victims they need to find out what really happened all those years ago. | BBC Radio 4 Saturday Play |
| 15 June 2005 | The All-Colour Vegetarian Cookbook | Chris Dunkley | Chris Moran, Katherine Igoe, Marcella Riordan, Dominic Cooper, Kate Colgrove Pope, Natasha Pyne and Karl Johnson | Jez, a socially incompetent clerk, has an antagonistic relationship with the woman in the next door office. On discovering her dead at her desk, he thinks that the cleaners, or IT, or someone, anyone else, will find her and.. deal with it. They don't. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 14 July 2005 | The Best Snow for Skiing | Linda Cracknell | Iain Robertson and Colette O'Neil | It is 1978 and Valda Trevlyn Grieve, the second wife of the great Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, is reassessing her life following her husband's death. A young student arrives at her door during a snow storm determined to pay his respects his deceased hero's memory. Valda, irritated by the youngster's intrusion and pious reverence, does her best to shatter his illusions. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 24 August 2005 | Genesis | Kate Atkinson (inspired by Genesis) | Read by Joanna Tope | God is the ultimate showman, parading the best of his tricks for the celestial auditorium. He creates a world between his hands, and dazzles his audience with a display of every shape and size of creature he can imagine. All is more or less going according to plan, until God pulls out his greatest creation yet – man. | BBC Radio 4 |
| 2 September 2005 | The Receptionist | Ali Smith | John Paul Hurley, Claire Knight, Candida Benson, Jimmy Chisholm, Joanna Tope, Gabriel Quigley and Mark McDonnell | Radio Play is a programme that plays in Colin's head. It's a particularly interesting programme about the history of the mouth organ. When Colin meets Beth, the new receptionist at the doctor's surgery, she seems to be able to hear Colin's radio programme too. The problem is Beth doesn't hear quite the same things as he does. She's quite certain the programme is about the balalaika. Is this, as Doctor Proctor suspects, an extraordinary phenomenon in modern psychology or is there something more universal at work? | BBC Radio 4 |
| 12 September 2005 | 15 Minutes that Changed the World: Amo, Amas, Amat | Louise Ironside | Gareth Thomas, Crawford Logan, Anne Lacey and Nick Underwood | In 1884, the Vatican granted a special dispensation which allowed two cousins from Linz to marry. That dispensation changed the course of European history. This fictional tale imagines what led the cardinal who signed the papers that day to make that decision. | BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Drama |
| 19 September 2005 | The Sundowner | Aileen Ritchie | Una McLean, Manu Kurewa, Chris Young, Lesley Hart and Wendy Seager | Following a suspected stroke, Betty finds herself condemned to live out the rest of her days in the least appealing possible way. So she fights. Care-worker Farai is charged with softening her up. Slowly he begins to win Betty's confidence but just as he thinks he's getting there he finds Betty has other cards up her sleeve. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 9 December 2005 | The Elizabethan Beauty Law | Lizzie Hopley | Annette Badland, Amanda Root, Tom Burke, John Rowe, Alan Cox, Lisa Moore and Toby Longworth | England 1587, a year before the Spanish Armada. Due to a need to curb Spanish influence in the country and control the escalating trend in female adornment, a new Beauty Law has been introduced. Under this law, any woman who traps a man of the realm into marriage via sorcery of self-embellishment will be tried under the Witchcraft Act and if found guilty, sentenced to death. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 15 December 2005 | My Difficult Second Album | Stephen Keyworth | Corey J Smith, Adrian Bower, Catherine Shepherd, Olivia Colman and Kate Colgrove Pope Guitar played by David Hale | For as long as he can remember Tom has had two dreams: to fall in love with the right girl and live happily ever after; and to make the perfect album – ten perfect songs that take you on an emotional roller-coaster, that stretch, touch, shake and inspire you. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 27 December 2005 | The Singing Butler | Alexis Zegerman and Ron Butlin | Robert Portal, Natasha Little, Rachel Atkins, Jon Glover and Ewan Stewart | Dramatisation of the story behind Jack Vettriano's famous painting of a man and a woman dancing on a windswept beach, while their butler and maid do their best to shield the pair from the elements. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 22 March 2006 | A Tiny Light in the Darkness | Ursula Rani Sarma | Tarun Iyer, Katherine Igoe, Kulvinder Ghir, Meneka Das, Garrick Hagon, Liza Ross, Mark Bonnar, Ifan Meredith and Sarah Okeze | In late August 2005, a group of strangers find themselves thrown together when their tube carriage is plunged into darkness. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 25 March 2006 | Prince Unleashed | Robert Forrest | Helen McAlpine, Steven Ritchie, Steven Cartwright, Barbara Rafferty and Jimmy Chisholm | Holly has become a strange and silent little girl, living unhappily with her smoky Aunty Isa and her drunken Uncle Dave. She is determined to escape with the help of her dog Prince. But Prince is dead, and when he returns from the Happy Hunting Grounds to sort things out once and for all, Holly is alarmed to find he is not the obedient pedigree playmate he once was. | BBC Radio 4 Saturday Play |
| 7 April 2006 | The Mecklington Miracle | Hannah McGill and Rachael McGill | Martin Hyder, Andrew Mayer, David Sant, Christine Bottomley and Charlie Hayes | A big conspiracy comes to a small town in this light-hearted comedy. The town's local hero hasn't stepped out of her house for years until Pedro arrives from Columbia determined to make a miracle happen in Mecklington. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 8 May 2006 – 12 May 2006 | A Patriot for Us | John Heilpern abridged by Robert Evans | Read by Gareth Thomas | Biography of playwright John Osborne, who changed the face of British theatre with an ironing board. Osborne's most famous protagonist, Jimmy Porter, first burst onto the English stage in the ground-breaking play Look Back in Anger on 8 March 1956. | BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week |
| 6 July 2006 | Kitty Elizabeth Must Die | Louise Ironside | Pauline Lockhart, Paul Blair, Joanna Tope, Finlay Welsh, Lisa Gardner, Vicki Liddelle, Alibe Parsons and Samantha Young | Angie will do whatever it takes to have her own child. After two unsuccessful rounds of IVF and with the debt collectors now knocking at the door, the future is not looking bright. Then Angie finds diapersanddreams.com, a website for mothers to be, and with it an international, supportive and seemingly gullible community of excited, pregnant women. | BBC Radio 3 The Wire |
| 30 July 2006 | Salome | Lizzie Hopley | Ian Brooker, Kenneth Cranham, Tony Curran, Paul Dinnen, Florence Hoath, Sally Hawkins, Karl Johnson, Gerrard McArthur, Fenella Woolgar | The myth of Salome and the dance of the seven veils began as a brief reference in the Bible and was later popularised in Wilde's highly sexual rendering of the tale. This new version focuses on the tense family drama at the centre of the myth. Set on the brink of a new era – while a young carpenter is travelling across Israel propagating his new religion – the story revolves around a young girl on the threshold of womanhood, who has been torn apart from her father and the world she knows when her mother falls in love with Salome's uncle Herod Antipas. | BBC Radio 3 Drama on 3 |
| 25 August 2006 | The January Wedding | Beatrice Colin | Karl Johnson, Cressida Trew, Richard Katz, Susan Engel and Sam Dale | In 1969 a landmark court case was brought in the UK. A young Polish woman petitioned for her marriage to an elderly Warsaw academic to be annulled. The annulment was granted on the basis that the marriage had taken place under duress. He had married her to save her from imprisonment under the Polish communist regime. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 9 October 2006 | A Tiger for Malgudi | R K Narayan dramatised by Ronald Frame | Paul Bazely, Meneka Das, Kulvinder Ghir, Raman Goyal, Indira Joshi, Raad Rawi and Nadim Sawalha | Now the companion of a Sādhu, an ageing tiger looks back on his life. A rich evocation of Indian life in the 1970s, this comic narrative views human absurdities through the eyes of a wild animal. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 17 October 2006 | Cats and Monkeys | Catherine Shepherd | Anna Carteret, Madeleine Brolly, Jack Shepherd, Ben Lewis, Catherine Shepherd and Paddy Anderson | Eve has come to India following the recent death of her parents. While everyone around her is seeking enlightenment, she is only concerned with obtaining a legal document which will allow probate on her parents' estate to be granted. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 18 October 2006 | It's Not You | Simon Burt | Jessica Harris and John Paul Hurley | It's a perfect holiday romance. Until they meet again. In the wrong place. And they are the wrong people. Tobes is not who Jo thinks he is, and Jo is not who Tobes thinks she is. So who, then, have they each fallen in love with? A tragi-comedy of misconceptions. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 31 December 2006 – 7 January 2007 | Resurrection | Leo Tolstoy dramatised by Robert Forrest | Katherine Igoe, Richard Dillane, Vivienne Dixon, Joanna Tope, Lesley Hart, Joe Arkley, John Buick, Phil McKee, Tom Brooke and Finlay Welsh | Katerina Maslova is a young prostitute on trial for the murder of one of her clients. Serving on the jury, Prince Dmitri recognises the young woman as the girl he seduced many years before. Believing himself partly responsible for her predicament, he embarks upon a complex legal attempt to reverse the sentence passed upon her. | BBC Radio 4 Classic Serial |
| 2 April 2007 – 6 April 2007 | Captain Starlight's Apprentice | Kathryn Heyman | Helen Longworth, Teresa Gallagher, Richard Dillane, Martin Hyder, Sean Murray, Thomas Arnold, Federay Holmes and Ben Lewis | In a coma in a hospital in New South Wales, Rose begins to have a series of visions about Jess, former Australian rough-riding champion, widow of a Chinese circus-owner and star of bushranger films. | BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Drama |
| 13 April 2007 | The Strange Desire of Ms Small | Debbie Jones | Sheila Donald, Jan Moffat, Pauline Lockhart and Phil McKee | Lois has all but forgotten the flamboyant mischief of her past until, in the drab surrounding of a high street bank, she meets Elsie, a disillusioned clerk 40 years her junior and exquisitely desirable. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 15 June 2007 | Jump | Alexis Zegerman | Danny Worters | Inspired by Event Horizon, Antony Gormley's exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. Gormley's army of lonely figures stand poised on the edges of buildings across the South Bank. A young free runner, jumping and vaulting his way across his familiar stamping ground, lands face-to-face with one of these iron men. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 4 September 2007 | The Architects | Chris Dunkley | Michael Jayston, Sandra Voe, Karl Johnson, John Rowe, Natasha Pyne and Ben Lewis | Howard is coming to the end of an unremarkable career designing houses which all look much the same. He intends to pursue his retirement in similar fashion, exactly like the next man. Then he meets Pat, who has decided that things have to change. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 14 March 2008 | Things to Do before You Die | Tom Dalton Bidwell | James Anthony Pearson, Stuart McQuarrie, Ayesha Antoine, Sophie Stanton, Lesley Nicol and John Lightbody | David is critically ill in hospital. Given the chance to have his dying wish granted, he asks for what most normal boys want – to lose his virginity. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 11 August 2008 – 15 August 2008 | The Pillow Book | Robert Forrest | Ruth Gemmell, John Rowe, Laura Rees, Benedict Cumberbatch, Caroline Martin, Richard Madden, Mark Bazeley and Colette O'Neil | A thriller and love story set in the court of the Empress Sadako in 10th century Japan. Within the palace walls, a series of disturbing crimes throws the court into confusion and unrest. Sei Shonagon's brilliance and wit is called upon for more than her Empress's amusement. | BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Drama |
| 4 February 2009 | Déjà Vu | Alexis Zegerman | Caroline Catz, Karim Saleh, Richard Sanda, Hovnatan Avedikian, Chris Pavlo and Helen Longworth | A love affair between a woman from London and a Paris-based French Algerian. When Claire and Ahmed meet, it is language that stands between them. But when Ahmed is stopped and searched in London under section 44 of the Terrorism Act, the seed of a much larger difference is sown. A finalist for the Prix Europa Radio Fiction Prize 2009 | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 8 June 2009 – 12 June 2009 | The Pillow Book (series 2) | Robert Forrest | Ruth Gemmell, Mark Bazeley, Liam Brennan, Ralph Riach, Nick Underwood and Simon Ginty | Second series inspired by the writings of Sei Shonagon, the 10th century Japanese poet and lady-in-waiting to the Empress Teishi. It has been nine months since Lieutenant Yukinari and Lady Shonagon solved the crimes in the palace, and nine months since they parted. A chill wind brings ominous news, and a blood-stained letter from Yukinari. | BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Drama |
| 15 November 2010 – 19 November 2010 | The Pillow Book (series 3) | Robert Forrest | Ruth Gemmell, Mark Bazeley, Simon Ginty, Laura Rees and Robin Laing | Set in 10th Century Japan, this is the third thriller inspired by the diaries of Sei Shonagon. Lady Shonagon and Lieutenant Yukinari return to investigate a murder in the Palace of the Sun Goddess. A favourite of the Emperor is found drowned in a pool in the Palace Gardens. But before Yukinari can investigate, the body is given a ceremonial burial and all trace of the crime washed away by the spring rains. | BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Drama |
| 17 November 2010 | Everything | Oliver Emanuel | Natasha Watson, Sandy Grierson and Meg Fraser | Everything tells the story of a fourteen-year-old girl who spends 7 days in a refuge for runaways. Under Scottish law, any young person under the age of sixteen is allowed to stay in a refuge for up to seven days without parental notification. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 27 January 2011 | Ursula and Boy | Abigail Docherty | Austin Moulton, Natalie Press and Meg Fraser | Inspired by the true story of Ursula Kemp whose eight-year-old son testified against her for witchcraft in St. Osyth, Essex, in 1582. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 9 February 2011 | The Continuity Man | Stephen Keyworth | Nitin Ganatra, Ben Lewis, Julia Innocenti, Karl Johnson and Sally Orrock | Nitin Ganatra is fed up with playing the 'good family man' Masood. He feels there is more to him as an actor than playing the nice guy, the good husband. On the advice of his agent, Crawford Bunch, he sets about making his profile a little more 'edgy' in order to convince Hollywood producers that he really has what it takes to play the baddie. But unfortunately Nitin is just too nice. And he gets more than he bargained for when he finds himself head to head with 'The Continuity Man'. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 12 February 2011 | One Night In Iran | Oliver Emanuel | Khalid Abdalla and Maryam Hamidi | A man and a woman meet in a hotel room. They have been in love for five years but have never yet spent a night together. Tonight they meet alone for the first time. But this is Iran, and what the couple are doing is illegal. If they are caught, or even suspected, the consequences might be too terrible to contemplate. | BBC Radio 3 The Wire |
| 18 August 2011 | Rightfully Mine | Ella Hickson | Kath Howden, Shauna Macdonald and John Paul Hurley | Twenty-six-year-old Amy is desperate to have her own child, but a teenage illness and subsequent operation has made it impossible for her to bear her own. Her last resort is to ask her fifty-year-old mother, Celia, to act as surrogate. A favour which Celia gives freely, and Amy is afraid to receive. | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
| 31 October 2011 – 4 November 2011 | The Pillow Book (series 4) | Robert Forrest | Ruth Gemmell, Cal Macaninch, Freddie Rayner, Brian Ferguson and John Paul Hurley | Lady Shonagon and Lieutenant Yukinari reunite for a new adventure in 10th century Japan. The young Emperor has disappeared from the Palace into the wilds of Japan, to learn the ways of his people. Mischievous as ever, he leaves behind him a challenge addressed to his champion and favourite, Lieutenant Yukinari, to find him. And, of course, Yukinari must be accompanied by his guide in the ways of palace life, the Lady Shonagon. The Emperor makes two conditions: that the couple travel unaccompanied and in disguise, dressed in peasant garb, a prospect that Lady Shonagon – a connoisseur of all the finer luxuries of life – finds both appalling and humiliating. | BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Drama |
| 30 November 2011 | Ancient Greek | Oliver Emanuel | Alex Austin, Vincent Ebrahim, Sophie Stanton, Caitlin FitzGerald and Austin Moulton | A promising student on the road to Oxbridge. A teacher on the eve of retirement. Graffiti scrawled on a school wall in a dead language. A play about education, protest and what we can expect in the future... | BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play |
Notes:
* ↑ Director: Dougie Irvine, Producer: Lu Kemp
* ↑ Directed by Lu Kemp and Christophe Rault A co-production between BBC Radio 4 and ARTE Radio
Sources:
* Lu Kemp's radio play listing at Diversity website
* Lu Kemp's radio play listing at RadioListings website