“It’s like the most incredible wide-awake dream. I want more. I need more.”
A rehearsed reading of an exciting new comedy, longlisted for the Theatre503 International Playwriting Award and Bread & Roses Playwriting Award.
When Leda shoplifts a love potion from a Brighton pagan shop to stop her girlfriend leaving, she’s shocked to find it actually works. It’s also the only genuine bottle – and some dangerous forces want it back. As the precious potion keeps changing hands, it triggers a chain of wild erotic entanglements between mismatched partners at a London queer club and Hampstead Heath pagan party, before an explosive final showdown on Brighton’s Palace Pier.
Multi-award-winning Matthew Parker directs the premiere of this dark farce about the illusions and delusions of love and lust. Inspired by the primal songs of PJ Harvey, Is This Desire? is a transgressive thrill ride for LGBTQ+ audiences, lovers of magical realism and Polly Harvey fans.
Ben SantaMaria (they/them) is a BAFTA Connect member and Paines Plough mentored writer. Other plays include: Really Want to Hurt Me (UK tour), Lulla (Verity Bargate Award top 100 plays), In Need (Verity Bargate Award top 10%); Jarman Garden (Riverside Studios; Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award finalist).
Matthew Parker (he/him) has received 9 Best Director Offie Award nominations. He won the Off West End Awards Best Artistic Director for his work at The Hope Theatre and the Offie Award for Best Director of a Musical for Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story (Jermyn Street Theatre).
