About Steve

The Plays

The son of a toolmaker and shorthand typist, Steve was admitted to the Royal Court Theatre Writers Group while still at school, and won a creative writing scholarship on leaving university. His early work helped establish the pioneering Half Moon Theatre in London’s East End. His best-known play from this time, Female Transport (published by Pluto Press and Samuel French), has since received some 500 productions around the world and will shortly celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Other plays produced internationally include The Women Pirates (Pluto Press), originally produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and 17 years later commissioned as a screenplay for Roger Corman in Hollywood. Alongside international success Steve has retained his commitment to regional and community theatre, in such plays as Good For You, Dark Glory and British Beauty, his experience of which is recorded in All Together Now (published by Methuen).

Adaptations and Translations

Steve’s adaptations include Great Expectations, produced at Liverpool Playhouse, and It’s all for the Best (from Candide) performed at the Victoria, Stoke.

His well-known translations include Brecht’s Man is Man produced by the Royal Court, Stoke and the RSC, and The Mother, produced at the Roundhouse and revived by the National Theatre, as well as contemporary plays by Fassbinder, Kroetz & Harald Mueller, whose Big Wolf, originally produced by the Royal Court, was subsequently published by Davis-Poynter. His experience as a translator is reflected in his essay in the book Stages of Translation (Oberon Books).

Teaching, Radio and Other Work

Steve has worked as literary manager with companies as diverse as Charles Marowitz’ Open Space, Greenwich Theatre and The Gate, often running workshops of new plays. In 1999 he founded Freehand Theatre with Christine Kimberley to produce script-in-hand performances of new work at St Mary-in-the-Castle, Hastings, where Passed On, his play about England’s first non-conformists, the Lollards, was presented in the season Free Spirits. Duty Free, about smuggling to Holland from the South Coast, was in the second season, which transferred to open the Soho Theatre’s studio.

He has taught drama and writing for, amongst others, RADA, Goldsmiths College, Smith College Massachusetts, and the Tisch School, NYU, as well as in Krakov and Kiev, and at Central School of Speech & Drama who commissioned his play Massa. His popular course at the City Literary Institute led to Writing a Play (A&C Black), already in its 4th edition and 5th language. He runs a ‘script doctor’ consultancy for writers and production companies, individually and together, called The Playpen.

Radio work includes a number of translations and What’s A Brother For, set in South London and based on the Roman comedy The Brothers, and Bill of Health about health-conscious hippies sucked into the world of competitive business. He also wrote the monologue McNaughton, about the would-be assassin of a British Prime Minister, which won the Writers Guild Best Radio Play of 2007 award, and successfully transformed into a one-man show at the Edinburgh Festival.

Contact Steve Gooch

You can contact Steve via email or submit your script to his Playpen script editing consultancy (including your payment and SAE) to: Steve Gooch Publications, Conaways, Langham Road, Robertsbridge, East Sussex TN32 5DT.