playwright | screenwriter
radio
projects
Simon is experienced in writing radio scripts and his plays have been broadcast by the BBC World Service.
BBC World Service: Demolition Man
Simon was commissioned by the BBC World Service in 2008 to co-write a radio piece, Demolition Man, with Dino Mahoney based on a video by the Chinese artist, Xiaopeng Huang as part of “The View from Here” which was broadcast in February 2009.
The View from Here
In the collaboration between BBC World Drama and Slade School of Fine Art, UCL in London, four artists from around the world made short films under the title ‘The View From Here’. Four writers with a connections to each country then used these films to inspire a radio drama.
Synopsis
Bong is known as “demolition man” for all the buildings he’s knocked down. It’s a job he loves – rebuilding new China – and he wants to show it off to his son. But he is to realise that the past cannot be so easily destroyed.
Producer: Marion Nancarrow
BBC World Service: Bare Branches (2008)
Bare Branches by Simon Wu and Dino Mahoney, Producer: Anne Edyvean
Saturday 12 January, 2008, 8.00-9.00pm, 2008
Synopsis: The crisis in gender imbalance in China, where 40 million men may not be able to find wives, is explored in the comedy Bare Branches.
Shen and Ping, a pig farmer and a teacher living in a small mountain village, discover that they have left it a bit late for love. They fight over the only two unmarried girls in the village, begin liaisons with the same widow but have no luck. In despair, they drown their sorrows and end up marrying each other.
Shen longs for fatherhood and adopts a piglet. When Ping’s cousin announces she is getting rid of a baby girl, the two men set off for the big city. Two men, a pig and a baby – what could possibly go wrong?
Producer: Jonathan Douglas Co-writter: Dino Mahoney
What is the legacy of war when the generation of people who lived through it remain silent about their experiences? This is Hong Kong in the 1970s: a teenage boy is forced to live in the household where his aunt works as a maid. He discovers that her past has been locked away in an apparently ordinary stone that she has kept for 30 years.
Looking for Stones was chosen by RTHK Radio 4 (Radio Television Hong Kong) to represent Hong Kong in the Worldplay International Radio Drama Festival, broadcast in 1999, by RTHK and also the BBC World Service, CBA (Canadian Broadcasting Company) and ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company). A stage version of the play is included in the book "City Stage: Hong Kong Playwriting in English" edited by Mike Ingham and Xu Xi.
BBC World Service: Looking for Stones (1999)
Diwali and Curry (2009)
Diwali and Curry is based on the Alperton tube station as part of the “Urban Scrawl” radio project.
It is a comedy of love, food and colours – the protagonist has to make a difficult decision to hide his love or let it shine.
Urban Scrawl was the biggest online drama project of 2009. Initiated by Dominic Cavendish, founding editor of theatrevoice.com, it brought that theatre-dedicated website, Rose Bruford College and new writing powerhouse Theatre 503 into a strategic partnership, with the aim of producing 53 high quality pod-cast dramas, each based on a station-stop on the Piccadilly Line. Please see http://www.urbanscrawl.org.uk/ for details.