Skunk
by Zawe Ashton
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Cast: 3f 5m plus 5+f/m
Performance fee: £70 per performance (plus VAT where applicable)
A surreal, dreamlike and hilarious play exploring the pressures and transformations that happen to teenagers as they grow up.
Otto’s parents have big plans for him. His mum thinks he’s ‘Cambridge material’. His dad wants him to play for Arsenal. It’s a lot of pressure, but Otto has it under control.
Until one morning, when Otto wakes up feeling pretty peculiar... discovering, unexpectedly, he’s been transformed into a skunk.
Inspired by Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis, Skunk was first performed at Soho Theatre, produced by the National Youth Theatre.
Content guidance: This play contains references to drug use.
About the author
Zawe Ashton is a writer, director and actor. Her writing and directing credits include short films Lighthouse, The Place We Go to Hide and Happy Toys, as well as a short documentary on the artist Lorraine O’Grady that formed part of the Soul of A Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power exhibition at Tate Modern.
Writing credits include winning the Farrago UK Poetry Slam! in 2000, Dream Factor (National Youth Theatre schools’ tour), Have a Butchers, Sweetness and Light (DryWrite), Edible Flowers (DryWrite at Latitude Festival), Girls Aloud (Clean Break Theatre). Zawe’s first play Harm’s Way was shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award in 2007. Harm's Way premiered in 2008 as part of the National Youth Theatre’s new writing season at The Lowry Theatre, Salford Quays, directed by Tessa Walker. Her latest play For All the Women Who Thought They Were Mad will be staged in 2019.
Zawe is also a novelist and her debut novel Character Breakdown was published by Chatto and Windus in April 2019.