Amy Jephta (ZA)
Authors / Film / Theater
is an award-winning South African playwright, screenwriter and actress.
Alongside her successful career as a writer in her native South Africa, she has enjoyed great success with critics and audiences alike with the Royal Court productions ‘Shoes’, starring James McAvoy and directed by Danny Boyle, which was transferred to Carnegie Hall in New York City, and the unflinching social satire ‘A Good House’, which premiered at the Royal Court and subsequently at the Bristol Old Vic in february 2025. The production received five-star reviews: *The Telegraph* (5*) described Amy Jephta as “a very bright star in the South African theatre firmament”.
Her feature film “Barakat” was selected as South Africa’s entry for the Oscar in the “Best International Feature Film” category (2022), currently she is the lead writer on an ITV/Netflix TV adaptation of a whistleblower eco-thriller. She is a graduate of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment Impact Lab and chair of Women Playwrights International.
Amy Jephta lives in Cape Town.
Awards / Prizes (selection)
Standard Bank Young Artist Award (2019)
Eugene Marais Prize for Drama (2017)
One of the Mail & Guardian’s 200 Best Young South Africans (2013)
WORKS
A GOOD HOUSE
Jan. / Feb. 2025
UA: Royal COURT (London) und Old Vic (Bristol)
In an affluent housing estate in the tranquil town of Stillwater, a shack suddenly appears on a vacant plot. The white neighbours pressure Sihle and Bonolo, a newly arrived Black couple, to take action against the shack – thereby setting in motion a biting satire about race, class and the question of who really belongs.
DSE: Burgtheater, Vienna, February 2027