Screen South Hi3 Network Panel: How Writers Can Shape the Future of Immersive Storytelling

Ella Hickson is an award-winning playwright whose work has been performed throughout the UK and abroad. Since the beginning of 2020 she has worked with Sacha Wares on 'Adult Children' - an XR short about the pandemic, commissioned by the Donmar Theatre, which took issues around proximity as its subject and form. 'Adult Children' was a critical success at the London Film Festival, 2021. She also collaborated with Sacha Wares on 'Madame Kalamazoo', an interactive story-telling experience, supported by The National Theatre, delivered to children, by email, throughout lockdown. Children received nineteen stories, featuring themselves as characters, the stories encouraged them to create work which they could then, via an online messaging platform, share with other children. Hickson's play ‘Anna’, a sonic collaboration with Ben and Max Ringham, opened at the National Theatre in Spring, 2019. Other theatre includes, 'Swive’ (2019) at The Globe, ‘The Writer’ (2018) and ‘Oil’ (2016) at The Almeida Theatre, and ‘Wendy and Peter Pan’ (2015) at The Royal Shakespeare Company. She is a member of the Royal Society of Literature, a MacDowell Fellow and recipient of The Catherine Johnson Award. She is developing new work with The Old Vic, Tim Minchin and Warp Films.