Silva Semerciyan

Personal statement

Silva is a Lecturer on the BA Drama course and an award-winning playwright. She is the module leader for Writing and Directing for Performance 1 (writing), Writing and Directing for Performance 2 (directing), and Writing for TV and Radio. She is also a module tutor for Making Performance 1 and Making Performance 2. 

Her research explores representations of women in dramatic writing and the impact of historical trauma on Armenian feminism. She recently completed a PhD at the University of East Anglia, investigating playwriting by Armenian women in the Western diaspora. Her thesis includes a trilogy of her own original plays that seek to capture Armenian women’s experience, past and present.

She has worked on devised community theatre projects for the Young Vic, Bristol Old Vic and Theatre Royal Bath. In 2016, she wrote Under a Cardboard Sea for 100 young company performers to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Bristol Old Vic. The Light Burns Blue, about the Cottingley Fairies, has been performed internationally by youth and student theatre groups. Her other plays for young people include Witches Can’t Be Burned for National Theatre Connections Festival 2020 and 2021 and A Quest for Arthur for the National Theatre’s Let’s Play series.

Silva’s awards include the William Saroyan Prize for Playwriting for Another Man’s Son and Best New Play at the Brighton Fringe Festival for Gather Ye Rosebuds. I and the Village, her Master's thesis play at the University of Birmingham, went on to be a finalist for the Bruntwood Prize and an OffWestEnd Award for Best New Play. Her first radio play, Varanasi, was a finalist for a BBC audio drama award.

She has been a BBC fellow and writer on attachment at the Bristol Old Vic, a writer on attachment at the National Theatre Studio, and a member of the Royal Court’s Studio Group. More recently, she received an Arts Council grant to develop her creative practice in writing fiction.

Academic qualifications

• HND Performance
• BA English with distinction
• MPhil Playwriting Studies
• PhD Creative Writing Research 
• PGCE (PCET)

Professional memberships

• Society of Authors

Areas of expertise

• Drama
• Performance
• Devising
• Playwriting