Story telling has always been at the heart of One and One

So we are really excited to launch our publishing imprint that looks to promote and publish new works for the theatre that have health and social care connections.

Dexter Neeparal is a writer and theatre-maker based in the UK. The Man Who Stood at the Gate is his first piece written for the stage, developed after five years working in Adult Social Care in Oxfordshire. During this time, he worked closely with older people, their families, and care staff — experiences that strongly inform his writing and its focus on dignity, autonomy, and life within systems designed to protect.Dexter has a longstanding love of American drama and fiction, particularly work that centres marginal voices, interior lives, and quiet acts of resistance. The Man Who Stood at the Gate was inspired in part by the themes and emotional perspective of The Catcher in the Rye, reimagined through the lens of ageing and institutional care in contemporary Britain.His companion play, The House With the Lights Still On, explores the domestic and familial moment that precedes institutional change, focusing on the unseen labour of care and the tensions between safety and independence. Dexter’s writing favours naturalism, restraint, and dark humour, drawing on close observation rather than autobiography.These plays mark the beginning of a body of work concerned with ageing, care, and the negotiations we make between freedom, responsibility, and love.