WASTELAND
A new play supported by the Adopt A Playwright Award
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It’s 02:00am. An academic, a cleaner and a student walk into a university... LOU has clawed her way through academia into touching distance of the top job, tomorrow her prize-winning ‘Lychee’ building will launch to anticipated acclaim. A primary school teacher back in Mexico, ROSA has cleaned LOU’s office for three years but they have never met, until tonight. JESS struggles over her dissertation in the 24-hour library, troubled by her imminent Pret shift and a planned student occupation.
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By 03:00am they are trapped. As they escape via a labyrinth of sub-basements before private security manager MALCOLM persuades striking union organiser DANNY to clear the building, the three women set in motion a farcical chain of events which upend their lives and lead inexorably to the question: what is the point of sustainable products if people are dispensable?​
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WASTELAND was completed with support of Adopt A Playwright Award (AAP) thanks to Sofie Mason, Diana Jervis-Read, Kenny Emson and the AAP Angels; also Andrew Broadley, MGCfutures and NT Studio. It was begun as UCL IAS / Urban Lab Creative Fellow thanks to Pushpa Arabindoo, Nicola Miller, Jordan Rowe, Catherine Stokes and Albert Brenchat-Aguilar. R&D 2021, with Rebecca Crankshaw, Jimena Larraguivel, Tara Kearney and Shreya Patel.
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October 2025 reading thanks to the Adopt A Playwright Award and the Criterion Theatre
featuring a terrific cast of: Kate Russell-Smith – Pepa Duarte – Géovanna Lewin-Rowe – Peter Clements – Becky Simon – Christopher Douglas – Lucy Carter – Finlay Paul. Brilliantly directed by Nicola Sanderson
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Image credit: Louis Milner.
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Nicola was inaugural Creative Fellow at UCL Urban Laboratory & UCL Institute of Advanced Studies 2019-2021, exploring their joint research theme of Waste through film and drama. She worked with Dr Pushpa Arabindoo on City Dionysia: Narrating Wasteland in Urban Life.
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