Neil Coppen is a renowned and prolific storyteller and theatre-maker hailing from Kwa-Zulu Natal . Coppen has won several major awards for his writing, design and direction work including Standard Bank Ovation Awards, Naledi’s, Fiesta and Kanna Awards, the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Drama 2011 and the 2019 Olive Schreiner Prize for Drama.
Some of Coppen’s most acclaimed theatre works (taught in schools and universities locally and internationally) include Tin Bucket Drum (Published by Wits University Press), Tree Boy, Abnormal Loads (published by Junkets) and NewFoundLand (published by Junkets) and his adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm toured South Africa for over five-years to sold out seasons. He also directed an acclaimed online reimagining of Hamlet in 2023.
In 2014 Coppen co-founded the multi award-winning research based theatre company Empatheatre alongside Mpume Mthombeni and Dylan Mcgarry and has worked consistently as the companies head dramaturg and director on the productions Soil & Ash, Ulwembu, The Last Country , Boxes, Lalela Ulwandle, Umkhosi Wenala and Unruly starring Andrew Buckland.
In 2022 Coppen alongside visual artist Vaughn Sadie and in collaboration with a community of Oudtshoorn based arts practitioners founded The Karoo Kaarte project (supported by the KKNK). Karoo Kaarte is a large-scale public participative storytelling and archiving project whose theatre productions Op Hierie Dag (2022) Droomkraan Kronieke (2023), Die Swartmerrie (2024) and Kroon en Konfetti (2025) have won several Kanna and Fiesta awards.
Coppen recently co-wrote and directed Empatheatre’s hit play Isidlamlilo/The Fire Eater which premiered at NAF 2022 and is currently touring both locally and internationally. He recently won the Cape Town Theatre Award (formerly Fleur du Cap Theatre Award) for Best Director for this production, which garnered a total of seven awards, winning in each of the categories for which it was nominated.
Coppen is currently a research associate at the University of Johannesburg.
