Brighton, England
Plays, fiction and collaborative work drawn from homelessness, mental health, history and the search for belonging.
Current production
The Lantern Theatre, Brighton
15-18 October 2026
For the stage
Dark comedy at the point where people can no longer maintain the stories they tell about themselves.
On stage - October 2026
Two desperate men meet in a night shelter - one in search of a beginning, the other in search of an end.
A darkly comic two-hander. A young support worker and a seventy-five-year-old rough sleeper act out fragments of the past while humour, horror and humanity coexist on the edge between survival and annihilation.
In development
Three people are trapped in a collapsing mental-health unit that has been effectively forgotten by the state.
Jack needs a job. Zack needs someone to replace him so that he can escape. Sara needs someone to keep the unit alive because without it she loses the only home she has known. The building itself begins to feel like a fourth character.
A developing black comedy about belonging, freedom and how much of ourselves we are willing to sacrifice for a home.
On the page
Fiction and memoir in which the physical world - a theatre, a house, a landscape - presses in on the life inside it.
Memoir
A beautifully produced mixture of short stories, images and poems. Rooted in a lifetime of working in theatre, it considers death, illusion and redemption.
"An object of great thought and originality and beauty." - Tim CrouchRead Hours
Novel
Philip's first published novel, drawing on four years spent farming in Southern Ireland. Its house, grounds and unsettling encounters grow from lived experience.
Read about the novel and an extractIn development
A paranormal novel about a couple living in a derelict asylum whose personal conflicts bring the spirits of its former inhabitants to life. Its deeper subject is the subconscious - and where it can lead.
Read about the novel and an extractListening, collaboration, place
Work made with people and places, bringing marginalised experience and Brighton's layered history into public view.
01
Edited publication
Edited by Dr Roberta Piazza and Philip Morgan, this collection brings together first-hand accounts from people with experience of homelessness. Their stories grew from work at First Base and later formed part of a presentation on homelessness in Parliament.
Read the publication02
Public event & research
A collaboration with Dr Roberta Piazza exploring the experiences of rough sleepers and Irish Travellers in Brighton & Hove. The 2018 event at First Base brought together community members, artists, support workers, researchers and policy makers.
Brighton Dome archive03
Current collaborative project
A two-year arts project using songwriting, creative writing and visual art to explore what a future home can mean. The work will become an installation combining a model, projected images, sound and spoken word.
04
Brighton histories
Accessible history told through place: from Cretaceous seas and Whitehawk Camp to racing crowds on the hill. Whitehawk itself becomes a witness to Brighton's long transformation.
Explore the histories
About
A Brighton-based writer and theatre practitioner whose work crosses theatre, fiction, social engagement and local history.
Philip trained at RADA as a stage manager and at Drama Centre as a director. His working life has moved through theatre, farming, care work and twenty years at Brighton Festival & Dome.
His experience supporting adults with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour, and his continuing work with people affected by homelessness, have shaped writing concerned with identity, belonging and the structures people build in order to survive.
He lives in Hove and writes in a loft shared, at least acoustically, with the local seagulls.
When I moved to Hove, I walked to work in the centre of Brighton and it was impossible to not see those who were manifestly living on the edge of our society: the beggars, the junkies, the street drinkers, the homeless. When I stopped working full time due to health reasons I decided to volunteer at First Base, a day centre for those without secure accommodation. My conscious motivations were to help others and to be an active participant in the street life of my neighbourhood. What I discovered was my tribe: the unhoused. There are many manifestations of being unhoused and not all are visible. I am a survivor of childhood abuse and for me and many others it puts us permanently on the edge of society, it brutally unhouses our minds. We are left trapped on the threshold. The house is not safe and the outside terrifying.
Contact
Enquiries from theatres, producers, readers, researchers, publishers and potential collaborators are welcome.