Bindweed (NHB Modern Plays)

'Thursdays, curry night. Curry and a pint for a fiver. Go at five thirty, home by ten. Beat my mum up for a while. Bed by ten thirty.' Four men convicted of domestic abuse offences meet each week to undergo a perpetrator programme. But as Jen, the new group facilitator, starts to make progress with the men inside the room, life outside begins to buckle. A shattering and darkly funny play about responsibility and rehabilitation, Martha Loader's Bindweed looks at what can be done to tackle abuse at its root. The play was the winner of the Judges' Award at the 2022 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, and was first performed at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, in 2024, in a co-production with HighTide and the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, and in association with the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester.

Martha Loader is a writer, producer and actor. Her play Bindweed (Mercury Originals/HighTide/New Wolsey/Royal Exchange Theatre, 2024) won the Judges' Award at the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2022. Other plays include: Splinter (Play Nicely Theatre, Eastern Angles); Cuckoo (INK Festival, schools tour); and Phenomenon (Hotbed Festival, Cambridge Junction). She won the Award for Promising Young Playwright at INK Festival 2019. She is an alumni of the Mercury Playwrights, Soho Writers' Lab and HighTide Writers programmes.