Surfacing and the Silence and the Noise

Two plays by the 2021 Papatango Prize-winning playwright Tom Powell.

Surfacing

NHS therapist Luc is fine. Honest. She’s definitely not overwhelmed by meeting Owen, a new client, definitely not freaked out by what she’s started seeing, definitely doesn’t think her reality has been punctured and something else is leaking in. Luc goes for a swim and feels a hand dragging her down to the bottom of the lake... When she surfaces, her reality is different. She’s haunted by tormented mice, shape-shifting people, and secrets she thought she’d buried.

This breathtaking new two-hander creates a contemporary Through The Looking Glass world. It premiered in February 2023.

The Silence and the Noise

Ben and Daize are teenagers either side of a county line. Drug runner and daughter of an addict. As the adult world around them becomes deadly dangerous, do these natural enemies have it in them to save each other?

The Silence and The Noise won the Papatango Prize, and captures the story of two young people on the edge.

Tom Powell received the Papatango Prize for his play ’The Silence and The Noise’ in 2021 which was recorded as an audio play toured to 12 venues across the UK. He was a participant of the BBC Studios Writer’s Academy 2020 and is developing an original project with Clerkenwell films and was a participant of the Royal Court Introductory and is published by Methuen/Bloomsbury.
He was selected for the BBC Words First spoken word programme, is an Arts Council England/BBC New Creative and his original audio drama Love Beyond the Zoo was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra in September 2021.
As a student Tom won the OTR National Radio Drama Award and the Footlights’ Harry Porter Prize. He is part of the Soho Writers Alumni Group and in 2015 he was shortlisted for the Soho Young Writers’ Award for his first play ’the bear hunt’.