Winner of The Hector MacMillan Best New Scottish Play 2020
Photograph by Mihaela Bodlovic
The Play
In 2002, in the turmoil after the end of the Kosovan War, Dritan is sent on the notoriously perilous journey across the Adriatic with a gang of people smugglers to a new life in Europe. He relies on his young wit and charm to make it to the UK. But the fight for survival continues as he clings to his identity and sense of self when he ends up in the British care system.
How Not to Drown is a ThickSkin and Traverse Theatre Company production, co-produced with Tron Theatre and Lawrence Batley Theatre.
Photograph by Ann Stark
The Playwright
Writer Nicola McCartney is a playwright, director and dramaturg. She trained as a director with Citizen Theatre/ G&J Productions and Charabanc Theatre Company Belfast. Nicola was Artistic Director of lookout Theatre Company, Glasgow from 1992-2002, and has twice been an Associate Playwright of Playwrights Studio Scotland. She has worked for a host of organisations as a dramaturg including Vanishing Point and Stellar Quines/ Edinburgh International Festival.
Her plays include: Easy, Heritage, Home, Standing Wave: Delia Derbyshire in the 60s, Rachel’s House, Cave Dwellers, and Lifeboat. She co-authored How Not to Drown with Dritan Kastrati (Thick Skin/ Tron/ Traverse) which won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2019.
She is also a social theatre practitioner and has worked with all sorts of groups including people within the criminal justice system in UK and USA, asylum seekers and refugees, drug users, survivors of domestic violence and childhood abuse.
Nicola has worked with Traverse’s flagship outreach programme, Class Act, since 1997, taking it to Russia, Ukraine and India. In 2018 she was a recipient of a Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Olwen Wymark award for encouraging theatre in the UK. Nicola is currently Reader in Writing for Performance at University of Edinburgh where she leads the Masters programme in Playwriting.