Ella Hickson: writing women, power and a changing world

Ella Hickson’s plays move between intimate creative lives and large social forces. In Oil, a mother and daughter’s story unfolds across 150 years of changing energy use; in The Writer, the making of theatre itself becomes a subject. Hickson’s career began with an award-winning play at the Edinburgh Fringe and has since taken in adaptations, touring productions and work at major British theatres.

From Guildford to the Fringe

Born in 1985, Hickson was brought up in Guildford, Surrey. She attended Guildford High School from 1996 to 2003 and later studied at the University of Edinburgh, where she performed with the Edinburgh University Theatre Company. That student company produced her first play, Eight, at the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Hickson wrote and directed the work, an anthology of monologues that won a Fringe First as well as the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award and the NSDF Emerging Artists Award.

The play’s next steps extended its reach beyond the festival. It toured to New York in January 2009 and opened at Trafalgar Studios in London that July. The route from a university company to a London theatre and an international tour gives Eight a clear place in the chronology of Hickson’s early career: it was both her first play and the work that brought her wider recognition.

Her next plays developed that career across different companies and venues. Precious Little Talent, directed by James Dacre, opened at Trafalgar Studios in March 2011. In 2012, Boys premiered at HighTide Festival Theatre under Robert Icke’s direction for Headlong Theatre, then toured to Nuffield Southampton Venues and Soho Theatre in London. These productions show a playwright’s work reaching audiences through both first runs and touring, rather than remaining at a single venue.

Reworking stories for the stage

Hickson has also taken on familiar stories as well as original plays. Her adaptation of J. M. Barrie’s Wendy & Peter Pan was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company for its 2013 Christmas season, directed by Jonathan Munby, and revived for Christmas 2015. In 2014, her adaptation of the legends of Merlin opened at Royal & Derngate and Nuffield Southampton, directed by Liam Steel.

These adaptations sit alongside the contemporary subjects associated with her best-known work. They show a career that does not rely on one form or theme: Hickson has written original plays, reworked existing stories and written for different producing organisations. The venues and touring destinations in her early career also place her work within a broad British theatrical landscape, from Edinburgh and Southampton to London and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Oil, time and women’s choices

Oil premiered at the Almeida Theatre in October 2016, directed by Carrie Cracknell and starring Anne-Marie Duff. The play spans 150 years, following a mother and daughter through periods shaped by the discovery and use of oil. Its family story provides a human scale for a much larger subject: dependence on fossil fuels and the changes that accompany their place in people’s lives.

The play also connects energy and social history to women’s roles. Its scope allows Hickson to place shifts in those roles alongside changes in the world’s relationship with oil, bringing personal and political histories into the same dramatic frame. The existing account describes the work as engaging with consumerism, colonialism and feminist ideas; the play’s stated focus on oil, a mother and daughter, and the evolution of women’s roles supports that reading without reducing the drama to a single message.

After Oil, the Almeida staged The Writer in 2018. Directed by Blanche McIntyre, it featured Sam West, Romola Garai and Lara Rossi. This play turns attention from a family and the history of an energy source to the conditions in which art is made. It uses a self-conscious theatrical form to examine power and gender within the performing arts, setting a protagonist’s creative ambitions against patriarchal expectations. The theatre is not merely the place where the story happens: it is part of the story’s subject.

Beyond the Almeida

Hickson’s work continued at the National Theatre with Anna, described as a binaural thriller. It opened in 2019, was directed by Natalie Abrahami and brought Hickson together with sound designers Ben and Max Ringham. The production adds sound-led storytelling to the range of forms represented in her career, alongside monologues, adaptations and plays staged at the Almeida and other theatres.

Her work has also received professional recognition. In 2011, The Guardian named Hickson among four young playwrights to watch. In June 2018, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature as part of its “40 Under 40” initiative. She has also taught at Oxford University. These details place her public career across theatre, literary recognition and teaching, while the productions themselves show her writing reaching audiences through different institutions and forms.

Why Ella Hickson deserves a place in British Legacy

Hickson’s place in British Legacy rests on a body of work that makes questions of gender and power dramatic rather than abstract. Oil links a mother and daughter’s lives to 150 years of energy history, bringing the social consequences of fossil-fuel dependence into a family story. The Writer turns the lens on theatre itself, examining the barriers and expectations that shape a woman’s creative work. These plays give audiences ways to consider who holds power, whose experience becomes visible and how personal decisions sit within larger systems.

Her contribution is also visible in the breadth and reach of her career. From Eight at the Edinburgh Fringe to productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Almeida and the National Theatre, Hickson’s work has travelled through British theatrical institutions and beyond. Her adaptations of Wendy & Peter Pan and the Merlin legends demonstrate a willingness to revisit existing stories, while Anna explores binaural form. Awards for her debut and election to the Royal Society of Literature recognise a career that has developed across performance and writing. Together, these achievements connect contemporary British theatre to urgent debates about women’s lives, creative freedom, energy and social change.

Sources

Ella Hickson — Wikipedia revision 1363589112

Adapted in part from Ella Hickson by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.