Elyse Dodgson

After starting a family, she became a teacher and worked as head of drama at Vauxhall Manor, a girls’ comprehensive in South London.

[5] Several of these plays were produced at the Oval House Theatre, including the influential Motherland in 1982, about women in the Windrush generation, which was based on interviews with many of the pupil's mothers on their experience migrating from the West Indies to Britain.

[12] The first long term writer's workshop programme with a partner country was initiated in 1996 when Dodgson, along with Stephen Jeffreys and Hettie MacDonald travelled to Uganda.

[13] Over the next twenty two years, Dodgson developed partnerships, held workshops, and produced translated readings and plays by playwrights in over 70 countries,[14] from Europe, the Middle East, Cuba, Central and South America, Nigeria, Southern Africa, India and finally China.

[16] The programme would include group sessions led by prominent British theatre makers, such as Harold Pinter, David Hare, Caryl Churchill, and Sarah Kane.