Empty by Robert Nurden

Eight years after they split, Amy unexpectedly reconnects with David, the man who once told her he never wanted a family. Now, she is trapped in a failing marriage and brutal IVF cycles with her husband Gary. The hospital delivers crushing news: her final embryo hasn’t survived. David, the man she left behind now desperately wants to be a father and believes he’s found love with a younger woman. Amy is horrified that he has become the man she needed, just too late…

Robert Nurden

Robert Nurden is an author and journalist who has worked, both as a feature writer and subeditor, on the Guardian, Independent on Sunday and Daily Telegraph, as well as many other national newspapers and magazines. In 2023 he published, to wide acclaim, I Always Wanted To Be A Dad: Men without Children, a highly personal account of being childless not-by-choice, with testimonies by other men. He is also a teacher of journalism and English, in this country and abroad, and has wide experience as a travel writer. For a period in the 1980s he was press officer for VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas), a charity which recruits professionals to improve the long-term prospects of the poorest communities in Africa and Asia. Wanting the theme of unwanted childlessness, particularly from the male point of view, to reach a wider audience, Robert wrote Empty, this two-hander stage work which is his debut play.