FIONNUALA KENNEDY
Fionnuala is a writer from Belfast. She wrote her first play, Hostel, in 2011, based on her own lived experience, which was performed to great acclaim. The play has been revived on a number of occasions and since that debut she has written a number of celebrated plays and performance pieces that have performed in Ireland, with tours across the globe. Her recent toured production of Removed, produced by Prime Cut Productions, explored the lived experience of young people in care in partnership with VOYPIC. Removed won the 2020 Zebbie award for Best Play and went on tour in venues across Europe, the US and Australia in 2023. She was one of ten writers on the National Theatre’s Connections Programme 21/22 with a play called Hunt, and was also featured as one of the writers in the BBC Drama Room in 21/22, where she was a shadow scriptwriter on the BBC’s The Dumping Ground, and where she also developed an original TV pilot, The List. Earlier this year she completed a commission for the Northern Ireland Opera, Nobody/Somebody as a librettist, about housing rights, for young people. Her latest play under commission from Brassneck Theatre, NI, is Project Children, which documents the real story of the emigration of Northern Irish children during the Troubles to the USA as part of a scheme devised by County Cork natives and the NYPD in the 1970s. The play opened in August 2023, at St Comgall’s, Belfast, to a near sold-out run and rave reviews. She is now adapting her first play Hostel for TV, for Hat Trick Productions (The Derry Girls) and the BBC.