Developed over two years with Tangle International, and supported by Nottingham Playhouse, NITRO and others, The Crossing premiered at the NEAT11 Festival before going on tour to Exeter Bikeshed Theatre and London’s well-known new writing house, Theatre 503 in 2012. Written in English and Twi it was the first all Ghanaian cast in a British theatre production, and played to sold out houses at all locations.

The Crossing tells the tale of 3 Ghanaian men, who travel the 3000km overland migrant route through North Africa, chancing everything in search of a new EUtopia. Based on first hand accounts and documentary evidence, it sought to put a face to the news stories and statistics about irregular migration.

All photos from the 2012 production, courtesy of Tangle International. Featuring Kwaku Boateng, Michael Offei and Michael Kofi.

Click here to read and extract from the play.

While in the U.K. Esther worked for many years as a theatre and playwrighting practitioner, manager and trainer for several excellent arts education groups: Chickenshed Theatre Company (running one of their mixed-ability outreach groups), Bigfoot Theatre (including drama-supply teaching and setting up a regional office with all that entailed), and Eastend Educational Trust (for who I mainly did Gifted & Talented Children’s courses in deprived areas).

She moved on to New Writing Development as Co-Director of the The Arvon Foundation’s Devon Centre, where she helped run and coordinate 90+ residential courses a year including with schools and partnership groups such as The National Carers Society, The Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture (as was) and Romany Theatre Company.

Strange Divide sparked interest in one new technology in particular - VR. Having written the play where the characters went skydiving in VR, I (Esther) began to wonder what kinds of drama might work in VR, what kind of vehicle it could be for storytellin and whether immersion really allowed it to be an 'empathy machine'. After a day’s volunteering with the Kaleidoscope World Tour, trying out all manner of experiences, I began writing experimental scripts to see if I could find a form for putting native VR stories on paper.

One of these was particularly well received at the first VR Writer’s Room for VR Day’s Europe (2016) which I also helped coordinate. This script October 13th was based on real-life stories from the end of WW2 on the Dutch-German border and placed the audience in the position of a child in a bombing raid, echoing today’s experiences of children in warzones and as refugees thereafter. It is still in development. If you are interested in the sound of this project, feel free to drop me a line.

Meanwhile, I have been writing scripts and story developing for several VR companies, providing industry specific translation for another, voice-over for others. In 2017 I was one of 3 story writers on WeMakeVR’s prize winning 48 hour film entry, Hollow, which won best VR experience and a nom for best script overall.

Specialising in native English scripts for voice-over, promo and increasingly VR/AR, Esther has found a home within commercial writing too. She is a regular (written) translator, editor, script adviser and B2C digital copywriter for multiple clients including in the A/V, cultural and corporate sectors. Since setting up Quint-Creative she has also worked as a feature writer with a focus on new technology, culture and family for Dutchnews and Hardt Hyperloop among others.

Click here or here to read some of her favourite tech-related articles, check out the refreshed websites of Hardt.global and Voicebooking.com for copywriting examples or drop us a line for a quote : )

I (Esther) have written poetry since I was 8, and it has always been a presence in my playwrighting. Over the last two years, I have been working on a collection for the first time and I have also started encorporating poetry into visual work.

Esther has trained and worked as a professional actor and voice-over for many years. Combining theatre work with commercial projects. Most recently she was a long-time ensemble member, playwright and Literary Director with Amsterdam’s English speaking theatre company Orange Tea Theatre (now Orange Theatre Company), and spent a year making anarchic impro-comedy with irreverent theatre troupe The Big Ideas Show.

At the moment she is script coaching and advising directors for the international student theatre group WOW Effect Theater in Nijmegen, and providing high-quality, raw audio voice-over from home.

(Pictured her in Orange Tea Theatre's first shorts show, with Gerben Tuin, photo Bas Niemens).