Offside

The women you've seen play today, we are more than football players, more than athletes and sportspeople of the very highest degree. We are heroines or heroes - or however you wanna say it – and we should be taking our place on posters and platforms and TV stations, changing the way perfect is thought of, changing the way girls can be brought up.

Offside tells the story of women's football in the UK through the eyes of a modern professional female footballer as she seeks to find a future in the game through exploring its past.

Mickey is alone in the locker room; she deliberates with herself about the biggest decision of her life, her career, her love – her football. But in a world where sexism is rife and a feeling of self-limitation reduces opportunities, fear makes for poor decisions while joy flourishes in the unlikeliest of places.

Offside has been researched with top women's teams, Manchester City Women's FC and Millwall Lionesses, where many players, sports scientists and others who are integral to the development of the game have been interviewed to gain an in-depth insight into their world. The play blends a dramatic narrative with performance poetry and chanting to evoke the pace and passion of the women's game.

The production, by Futures Theatre, has been developed in partnership with the National Football Museum, Manchester, and the IWM, London.

Hollie McNish is a British poet, author and spoken word artist who has won the UK Slam Poetry Competition, 2009. Her publications include Papers (Greewich Exchange, 2012) and Nobody Told Me (Blackfriars, 2016) and her albums include Versus (Abbey Road, September 2014).

Sabrina Mahfouz is a British Egyptian playwright, poet and screenwriter. Her 2016 plays are With a Little Bit of Luck (Paines Plough); Slug (nabokov); Battleface (Bush Theatre); Layla's Room (Theatre Centre) and The Love I Feel is Red (Tobacco Factory Theatres). Her TV short, Breaking the Code, was produced by BBC3 & BBC Drama earlier this year. Her play Chef won a 2014 Fringe First Award and Clean was produced by Traverse Theatre and transferred to New York in 2014. Sabrina Mahfouz has been the Sky Arts Academy Scholar for Poetry, Leverhulme Playwright in Residence and Associate Artist at Bush Theatre.