Is God Is

Kaleya Baxe is a British born German Angolan writer, director and facilitator whose work pushes the boundaries of storytelling in creative and collaborative environments. She trained as a facilitator on the Applied Theatre course at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and has worked on outreach projects at the National Theatre, Young Vic, and Kiln. As a director and writer, she consistently offers alternative perspectives to political conversations around love, race and community.

As a multi-disciplinary artist she is interested in where research, art, and real life intersect, as well as writing as a form of archiving. Her current work includes her first writing commission The Tree Who Found Her Roots, dir. Rebekah Murrel (Jouvert, Harold Pinter) prod. by Uproot Productions, a Seed Commission for NDONGO, a new musical in collaboration with her father, Afro-latin dancer and choreographer Garcia Baxe (Camden People’s Theatre), and transitioning into the world of film as a writer and director. Her latest project waterlilies is part-scripted part-devised, and explores love as a political contradiction to capitalism with Contemporary Performance Practice students at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Her play the light that blinds was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting 2023, and she is currently working on a new piece of writing as part of the Bush Theatre Emerging Writers Group.

Aleshea Harris is a playwright, screenwriter, and performer. Her play Is God Is makes its UK debut at the Royal Court in September 2020, and has won the 2016 Relentless Award, an OBIE Award for playwriting in 2017, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award in 2019 and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

Aleshea was awarded a Windham-Campbell Literary Prize and the Mimi Steinberg Playwriting Award in 2020 and the Hermitage Greenfield Prize in 2021. She has performed her own work at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Orlando Fringe Festival, REDCAT, as part of La Fête du Livre at La Comèdie de Saint-Étienne and at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles. Harris is a two-time MacDowell Fellow and has enjoyed residencies at Hedgebrook and Djerassi.

Contains scenes of violence and strong language. Depictions of violence, blood, death, murder, fire and burns. References of domestic violence, familial abuse and generational abuse. Depictions and references of suicide, suicidal ideation and emotional abuse by a parent.