Amy Jephta

‘A very bright star in the South African theatrical firmament…With her lacerating, emotionally charged interrogation of the quotidian realities and ambiguities of post-apartheid Cape Town, Jephta stakes a strong claim to being one of South Africa’s leading contemporary playwrights The Telegraph 5*

Amy is an award-winning South African playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker; working internationally and based in Cape Town. She was named one of the Mail and Guardian’s 200 Top Young South Africans and is a recipient of South Africa’s highest art accolade – The Standard Bank Young Artist Award and the Eugene Marais Prize for Drama – for her play Krystalvlakte.

Her plays have been performed at the Royal Court, Bush, Jermyn Street, Edinburgh International Festival, Hightide, the Fugard and other international festivals and theatres. Her production of Shoes, directed by Danny Boyle, performed by James MacAvoy, transferred to Carnegie Hall, NYC in 2017. Amy returned to the Court in January 2025 for the world premiere of provocative social satire A Good House (directed by Nancy Medina, in association with Bristol Old Vic and Market Theatre) which was met with critical acclaim.

Amy is an established screenwriter. Her feature film Barakat was selected as South Africa’s entry for Best International Feature at the Oscars in 2020; her fourth feature film following Ellen: The Ellen Pakkies Story, Sonskyn Beperk, and While You Weren’t Looking, and her short - Soldaat. On the TV side, Amy has storylining and scriptwriting credits on Afrikaans TV dramas Nkululeko, Suidooster, Catch me A Killer and Trackers.

Amy also co-founded the African Women Playwrights Network, served as chair of Women Playwrights International, and serves on the advisory panel for CASA. She was the recipient of the inaugural Baxter Theatre/TAAC Emerging Theatre Director’s Bursory (2010), is an alumnus of Lincoln Theatre Directors Lab, and Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment Impact Lab.