COME TO WHERE I AM to Make Shedinburgh Debut with Paines Plough
Uma Nada-Rajah, Hannah Lavery, and Linda McLean present new monologues at Assembly Checkpoint.
Paines Plough, one of the UK's leading new writing touring companies, has announce the line up for Come To Where I Am, a special one-off new writing showcase as part of Shedinburgh at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Presented by Paines Plough in association with Playwrights' Studio Scotland, the event will take place at Shedinburgh (Assembly Checkpoint) at 5pm on 11th August 2026.
Responding to the creative prompt 'Come to Where I Am', Paines Plough invited three Scottish playwrights to write a monologue about the places and people that shape them. Uma Nada-Rajah presents Crowbar, Hannah Lavery presents The Things I Do Not Say, and Linda McLean presents a piece originally commissioned by Paines Plough in 2017, Where I'm From Is Invisible.
Come to Where I Am is a sequel to Paines Plough's monologue series, Come To Where I'm From, which launched in 2010. Come To Where I'm From invited hundreds of playwrights to write and perform a monologue exploring where they come from, assembling a theatrical tapestry of the nation. This series featured stories from writers such as Dennis Kelly, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, Roy Williams, Simon Stephens, Gary McNair, Louise Brealey, and James Graham, whose piece 'Northern/Not Northern' was the inspiration for his hit BBC series, Sherwood.
Come to Where I Am continues this legacy, challenging a new cohort of playwrights to create monologues for performance, where their location, and their personal response to living in the present day, become the starting point for their creative explorations.
Katie Posner, Joint Artistic Director of Paines Plough, and Debo Adebayo, Deputy Artistic Director, added: “We can't wait to present these three brilliant pieces at Shedinburgh. Linda's piece is a Come to Where I'm From classic, which we jumped at the opportunity to bring back; a piece that explores how time - as well as place - has the incredible capacity to shape our knotty personal present. Alongside this, we're delighted to present brand new commissioned pieces by two brilliant writers, Uma and Hannah, both of whom have written stories expressing their experiences of 'now' with theatrical force and wit. It's a pleasure to make our debut at Shedinburgh, to collaborate with the mighty Playwrights' Studio, Scotland, and to commission Uma, Hannah and Linda, to add their talented voices to our tapestry of the nation's playwrights.”
Alongside Come To Where I Am at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Paines Plough will also be presenting Morna Young's After Party, in a co-production with the Traverse Theatre and the Belgrade Theatre. Directed by Joint Artistic Director of Paines Plough, Katie Posner, and running at the Traverse Theatre from 6 - 30 August, before a run at the Belgrade Theatre from 9 - 12 September, After Party is an unflinching, darkly humorous exploration of autonomy, family and life-defining choices.
Hannah Lavery is an award‑winning poet, playwright, and performer. She served as Edinburgh Makar from 2021–2024 and is an Honorary Fellow of the Association of Scottish Literature. A former Associate Artist with the National Theatre of Scotland, her plays include The Drift and Lament for Sheku Bayoh. She was a winner of the Peggy Ramsay/Film4 Award (2022) and has written for BBC Radio Four, the Royal Lyceum, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Northern Stage, and the Traverse. Her poetry collections include Blood Salt Spring, Unwritten Woman and Everyday Everything (Polygon, 2026).
Linda McLean is a playwright from Glasgow. Her award-winning plays include Riddance (Paines Plough), One Good Beating, Shimmer, strangers, babies, Any Given Day, Sex & God, Every Five Minutes, and Castle Lennox (a co-production between Edinburgh Lyceum Theatre and Lung Ha Theatre Company; winner of the Hector McMillan Prize 2023). During the pandemic, she wrote Go On (a response to Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett) for the Citizens Theatre, directed by Dominic Hill. In 2026, she adapted Denise Mina's The Long Drop for the Citizens Theatre re-opening season. Linda was Creative Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities in 2011, Chair of Playwrights' Studio Scotland (2008-2015), and Artistic Associate of Magic Theatre, San Francisco (2012-2014). A French anthology of her work, translated by Sarah Vermande and Blandine Pélissier, was published in 2015. Her play Cold Cuts (Tranches Froides) will be presented at the Avignon Festival in 2026 and will subsequently tour schools in the autumn.
Uma Nada-Rajah is a playwright based in Kilbarchan, Scotland. She was one of the BBC's Scottish Voices 2020 and was the Starter Female Political Comedy writer-in-residence at the National Theatre of Scotland. Uma is a graduate of Ecole Philippe Gaulier and a previous participant of the Royal Court's Young Writers' Programme and the Traverse Theatre's Young Writers' Programme. In 2014 Uma won the New Playwrights Award from Playwrights' Studio Scotland. Her play Black Hole Sign had its premiere at the Traverse Theatre in October 2025, followed by a run at the Tron Theatre. Previously, her play Exodus premiered at the Traverse Theatre in August 2022. Awards include: Kavya Prize 2022, Shakespeare is Dead International Selection 2024. She works as a staff nurse with NHS Scotland.
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