Hannah Lavery

Writer/Director


STAGE

Hannah is a playwright, poet, performer and director.  She is also developing projects for television, including PUNCHLINES 1976 with World Productions/BBC Scotland.

Theatre: Hannah is one of Imaginate’s Accelerator Artists and an Associate Artist with the National Theatre of Scotland as well as Writer in Residence at Lyceum Youth Theatre.  Her play for children commissioned by Imaginate was shared as a work in progress at Edinburgh International Children’s Festival in May 2021.  She won the 2021 Adopt a Playwright Award (Off West End Plays and Playwrights); her adaptation of JEKYLL AND HYDE was produced at Pitlochry Festival Theatre and her highly acclaimed play LAMENT FOR SHEKU BAYOH was revived at the Royal Lyceum Edinburgh, both in August 2021. LAMENT had been premiered the previous year, directed by Hannah, in a co-production with National Theatre of Scotland and Edinburgh International Festival.

In 2020, she was awarded a New Playwrights’ Award by the Playwrights Studio Scotland and selected by Owen Sheers as one of his Ten Writers Asking Questions That Will Shape Our Future for the International Literature Showcase, a project from the National Writing Centre and the British Council. She was also selected as one of the Scottish Voices for the BBC Writers’ Room.    THE DRIFT, her autobiographical lyric play, toured Scotland as part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Season 2019.

Poetry: In 2022 Hannah was installed in the prestigious honorary post of Edinburgh’s ‘Makar’ and will publish a new volume of poetry this year. Her poetry has been published widely and her poem, SCOTLAND YOU’RE NO MINE, was selected by Roseanne Watt as one of the Best Scottish Poems 2019. Her pamphlet, FINDING SEAGLASS was published by Stewed Rhubarb Press in 2019.  Hannah is an experienced workshop facilitator and mentor and received the Creative Edinburgh Leadership Award in 2020, for her work with the Writers of Colour Writing Group and for curating and directing a film poetry series, SORRY, I WAS ON MUTE, for Fringe of Colour.