James Phillips is a writer and director.
Plays include: The White Whale (Slung Low/Leeds) The Rubenstein Kiss (Hampstead); City Stories (St James); Hidden in the Sand (Trafalgar Studios); The Wind in the Willows (Latitude/ Theatre503); Time and the City (Slung Low/Hull); Bobby and the Chimps (Florida); The Little Fir Tree (Sheffield Theatres).
The Rubenstein Kiss won the John Whiting Award and the TMA Award for Best Play.
Directing credits include: The Rubenstein Kiss, Hidden in the Sand, City Stories, Frankie and Johnny at the Claire de Lune (Sound Theatre); Macbeth (Sheffield Crucible); Trettondagsafton (National Academy in Stockholm); Touched (Soho Theatre). His first professional production, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme at the Pleasance, London, won an award from NESTA, the national endowment for the arts. He was an Associate Director of Sound Theatre, London. He is a selector for the National Student Drama Festival.
TV credits include: If We Dead Awaken (Channel 4/Touchpaper). His first film script, The Watching Tree, is being produced by Blonde to Black Productions.
His first book of documentary photography, Nicosia: The Last Dividing Line, was published in Cyprus in 2013.
His photographs can be seen at www.jamesphillips.net.

You remember when we started to hunt whales again?
We fought monsters and we killed them and wrestled the oil from their dead bodies and we sold it.
In the future we hunt whales for the oil in their bodies. Just like they did in centuries past. The oil of a single whale can run an army for a week. This is new science. This is our future. So we send gangs of men out onto the dark, cold sea to bring back the things we need.
The crew of the Pequod are going to sea because it's their job. But Ahab, captain of the Pequod, is not going to sea for the oil or for the money. Ahab is going for revenge. Revenge on the vast whale that took him down into the black depths of the ocean. Revenge on the greatest whale in all the oceans: a perfectly white whale. And Ishmael, a young man new to whaling, is going to sea seeking a hunter's violence, trying to stop the thoughts of violence in his heart.
And we are all going with them.
The White Whale premiered on 4 September 2014, at Leeds Dock, UK in a production by Slung Low theatre company.