How to Hold Your Breath

A freelance director, dramaturg and script reader based in London, Blythe believes in work that is subversive, sophisticated, frank and joyful. Her experience includes staging world premieres and developing the unique ideas and the new writing of the UK's most exciting artists.

Zinnie Harris is a multi-award winning playwright, screenwriter and theatre director. She first came to prominence in 2000 with her early play Further Than The Furthest Thing (Tron Theatre/ Royal National Theatre) which won the Peggy Ramsay Playwriting Award, the John Whiting Award and a Fringe First Award and has now been translated and performed all over the world. Her recent plays include The Duchess (of Malfi) (Royal Lyceum Theatre, Citizens Theatre), Meet Me At Dawn, (Traverse Theatre / Edinburgh International Festival), This Restless House (Citizens Theatre / National Theatre of Scotland / Edinburgh International Festival), winner of Best New Play at the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland 2016, and shortlisted for Susan Smith Blackburn Award and UK Theatre Awards Best New Play; and How To Hold Your Breath (Royal Court Theatre), winner of the Berwin Lee Award 2015. Her adaptations for the stage include Rhinoceros (Edinburgh International Festival), A Doll’s House (Donmar Warehouse), Master Builder (West Yorkshire Playhouse) and Miss Julie (National Theatre of Scotland). Her screen writing includes two 90 minute dramas for Channel 4 (Richard Is My Boyfriend and Born With Two Mothers), and episodes for the BBC1 Drama Spooks. She was lead writer and Series Creator for the BBC1 Agatha Christie adaption, Partners In Crime. As a theatre director she has directed numerous main stage productions for the RSC, the Traverse Theatre, Royal Lyceum Theatre, and the Tron theatre. She won Best Director for the Cats 2017, for her direction of Caryl Churchill’s A Number at the Lyceum Theatre, and recently directed The Duchess (of Malfi) to much acclaim at the Citizens Theatre / Lyceum Theatre. She is an Associate Director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre and Professor of Playwriting and Screenwriting at the University of St Andrews.

Contains strong language, depictions of miscarriage, descriptions and depictions of abstracted sex and sexual assault, physical abuse, and use of blood.