Meet our Embark 2026 Scriptwriters

Simi Roach

Simi Roach is a Jamaican-British actor, writer, and Disability justice activist. Their work explores Disability culture, history, and innovative Disabled representation through both written fiction and live performance. Simi has also performed as a spoken word poet, public speaker and educator, and is both an experienced stage and screen actor. They are queer and use they/them pronouns.

Simi has both written and starred in the sold out two-hour solo show Cirque du Handicap which has been staged at Bloomsbury Theatre, Soho Theatre, and St. Paul’s in Cambridge. They’ve performed in a production of Ayo as the titular main character at the Bolton Octagon, and a Dutch production of Romeo and Juliet produced by Ilse Wouters. For three years, Simi has been a member of Vital Xposure’s VX Labs’ artist panel where they work with them on numerous theatre projects.

Their screen credits include main character roles in both the award-winning short film But Still We Move and De Bushalte, as well as background roles in the Dutch CBS show Bestseller Boy and the Dutch Netflix film The Takeover.

Ellen Stickland

Ellen is a self-confessed Shakespeare nerd and writer from the South East. She has trained with National Youth Theatre and the Old Vic as well as studying for her Master’s degree with The Globe. Now, Ellen’s focus has turned to writing and trying to find the small joys in life.

The Disabled End of the World Collective is about a wheelchair-user named Chizzy who’s celebrating their birthday with four Disabled acquaintances when news reports that a comet is about to hit earth and end the world. The five of them are stuck together while they wait for the end. As they wait, they begin to bond and realise they can be themselves with each other cut off from the rest of the nondisabled world. They work together to turn Chizzy’s home into an accessible apocalypse shelter, all while caring for and helping one another unashamedly. Each character finds something they didn’t realise they’d previously been missing – from shedding shame to discover the joy in mobility aids, to being able to come out as queer free from relying on transphobic parents for care. They undergo a transformation and become a postapocalyptic wheelchair biker group, the end of the world unexpectantly turning out to be the best thing that ever happened to them. And once it’s announced that the world actually isn’t going to end, they each struggle with the idea of facing their old lives again.

My idea is a two-hander exploring climate change and the apathy that so many people seem to have towards the climate crisis. I want to explore the human side of it and contrast our modern day knowledge and attitudes with those of people throughout history. The story will switch between the present day following two women in a relationship, and medieval times with two ‘best friends’ exploring the different approaches and responses to natural, seemingly inexplicable, disasters. I was inspired by the solar eclipse that happened this Summer and how it happened in the midst of the hottest summer on record. I wondered how our ancestors would have reacted to such things. Forest fires, flash floods, a solar eclipse and a meteor shower all taking place within weeks of each other would have been seen as a bad omen. Now, we might laugh off those beliefs as silly and unscientific but we know that extreme weather is a sign of climate change, so why are we so quick to ignore the warning signs?