HILARY BELL

“The story Bell has woven into a particularly strong and intriguing narrative is almost a statement of belief in the power and magic of theatre.”

Hilary Bell writes for stage, radio, screen and music theatre.

Hilary’s plays have been produced nationally around Australia, by The Sydney Theatre Company, Ensemble, Belvoir, Griffin, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Black Swan, Deckchair, La Boite, NORPA, The National Theatre of Parramatta, Sydney Opera House, City Recital Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, Vitalstatistix, NIDA and The Darlinghurst Theatre Company. Internationally she’s been produced in Europe, in the USA by companies including Atlantic and Steppenwolf, in London by The National’s Connections programme, and at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe/House of Oz.

Wolf Lullaby, written in 1995 won her the Jill Blewett Award and the inaugural Philip Parsons Young Playwrights Award. Other plays include Fortune, The Falls, The White Divers of Broome, Victim Sidekick Boyfriend Me, Perfect Stranger, Splinter, The Bloody Bride, Inscription Award winner Memmie Le Blanc, and Australian Writers Guild (AWGIE) winners The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Ruysch, The Red Balloon and the AWGIE-winning Summer of Harold. She has adapted Chekhov’s The Seagull, Moliere’s The Hypochondriac, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors. Collaborations include The Mysteries: Genesis (with Lally Katz), and she was associate writer on Paul Capsis’ play Angela’s Kitchen, which won Best New Australian Work at the Helpmann Awards 2010. Other awards include the Aurealis Fiction Award, the Bug’n’Bub Award, the Eric Kocher Award and a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nomination.

She also writes lyrics and libretti for opera, musicals and song cycles. Collaborating with composers including Phillip Johnston, Greta Gertler Gold, Andrée Greenwell, Victoria Bond, Douglas Stephen Rae, Elena Katz-Chernin, Maria Alfonsine, Luke Styles and Ensemble Offspring, among her music theatre works are The Wedding Song, The Red Tree, Mrs President, Starstruck The Stage Musical (with Mitchell Butel), Alphabetical Sydney: All Aboard! and Seven Stories. She collaborated with composer Jacob Collier and director Michael Gracey on a musical for UK’s Scenario Two. Currently, Hilary and Greta Gertler Gold are writing a musical adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Hilary is the creator of several picture books. With artist Matthew Martin, she made ‘The Marvellous Funambulist of Middle Harbour’. Her collaborations with illustrator Antonia Pesenti include the best-selling, ABIA-nominated ‘Alphabetical Sydney’. As well as a musical, the book inspired the Museum of Sydney’s exhibition Alphabetical Sydney: Creative Lab.

She has written audio scripts for the State Library of NSW exhibitions Dead Central and Quick March!, and for the Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition, David Goldblatt: Photographs 1948-2018. She was a 2023-24 Visiting Scholar at the State Library of NSW.

She is a member of 7-ON Playwrights, a collective of mid-career dramatists who collaborate on multi-voice projects.

Hilary is a graduate of the Juilliard Playwrights’ Studio, NIDA, and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). She was the 2003-04 Tennessee Williams Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of the South, Tennessee, and in 2012 the Patrick White Playwriting Fellow at the Sydney Theatre Company.