'I want the world to change shape.''I'm not sure theatre can do that.''Well then where am I meant to take that impulse because I'm very serious about the endeavour?'A young writer challenges the status quo but discovers that creative gain comes at a personal cost.The Writer premiered in 2018 at the Almeida Theatre, London, in a production directed by Blanche McIntyre.The Writer was a finalist for the 2019 Su...

When her first play, Eight, transferred from student theatre in Edinburgh to the West End and then New York, Ella Hickson was still in her early twenties. She has since built on that promise with a series of engaged and engaging dramas that pit romanticism and optimism against the realities of life as a young person in Britain.Eight (Edinburgh Fringe, 2008), that astonishing first success, is included here: a state-of-the-nation group portrait in monologues, 'an i...

Four boys face the tricky transition to adulthood in Ella Hickson's riot of a play.The Class of 2011 are about to graduate and Benny, Mack, Timp and Cam are due out of their flat. Stepping into a world that doesn't want them, these boys start to wonder whether there's any point in getting any older. How will they find the fight to make it as adults?Before all that they're going to have one hell of a party. It's hot and there'll be girls. Predict a riot.Ella Hickson'...

The Bronze Age. The Iron Age. The Age of Oil.The Stone Age didn't end for want of stones.Oil follows the lives of one woman and her daughter in an epic, hurtling collision of empire, history and family.Ella Hickson's explosive play drills deep into the world's relationship with this finite resource. It is 'the single most gloriously audacious piece of playwriting of the last few years' ( Evening Standard) and won the Catherine Johnson Award for Bes...

'My mother seduced a man so successfully that he altered the constitutional history of this country.'Elizabeth I is the only unmarried woman to have ever ruled England. And she reigned for forty-four years. Mastermind. Seductress. Survivor.Created by award-winning writer Ella Hickson and director Natalie Abrahami, Swive [Elizabeth] shines a light on the ways and means by which women in power negotiate patriarchal pressure in order to get their way....

Two plays by award-winning playwright Ella Hickson.Precious Little Talent is about a father desperate not to forget his daughter and two young people determined not to be forgotten by the world.It was first performed at the Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and later, in a revised, full-length production, at the Trafalgar Studios, London, in April 2011.Hot Mess is a dark and lyrical tale about friendship, los...

A touching and funny play about 20-somethings graduating into a world that's sold them down the river.Joey's got a first-class degree, 20k worth of debt and works in a pub. Shunned by the world, rejected by her estranged father, she finds herself falling in love with an idealistic young American…Ella Hickson's play Precious Little Talent was first performed at the Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh, in August 2009, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. A revised, full-l...

A dark and lyrical tale about friendship, loss and loneliness.Twins Polo and Twitch were born with only one heart between them: where Polo is not looking to be loved, Twitch can do nothing but.Ella Hickson's play Hot Mess was first performed at the Hawke & Hunter Below Stairs Nightclub, Edinburgh, in August 2010, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

A painfully comic excavation of a family history that asks if there is an authorised version of the past - or just the one we can live with.Kate Bane returns home to her parents for a winter weekend to introduce her new boyfriend. As the snow falls, Kate finds herself searching with increasing desperation for the truth about her family's past. Are her memories fact, or are they continually shifting acts of imagination?Unable to pin down the truth, can she write a version of...

Nominated for Community Award at The Stage Awards 2025Five powerful new plays by some of the most exciting artists working in the UK today – created with and for young people. Developed as part of Wonder Fools' international project Positive Stories for Negative Times, which has engaged over 11,000 young people across 24 countries including the UK, South Africa, India, USA, Canada, Italy and Australia. Co-commissioned by Wonder Fools and the Traverse Theat...

Eight compelling monologues offering a state-of-the-nation group portrait for the stage.From Millie, the jolly-hockey-sticks prostitute who mourns the loss of the good old British class system, to Miles, a 7/7 survivor, and Danny, an ex-squaddie who makes friends in morgues, Eight looks at what has happened to a generation that has grown up in a world where everything has become acceptable.Ella Hickson's play Eight was first staged at Bedlam Theatre, Edinb...

Ella Hickson's version of J.M. Barrie's much-loved story puts the character of Wendy firmly centre stage, in an adaptation that is refreshingly modern but never loses the charm of the original.Winter 1908. Snow is falling across London. Wendy Darling and her brothers sleep peacefully in their bedroom, as their parents bicker downstairs. In a sudden flurry of snow their window blows open, and into their lives tumbles a mischievous boy called Peter, followed by a fractious fairy call...