Jessica Swale

Jessica Swale is an Olivier Award-winning British playwright, theatre director and screenwriter. Her first play, Blue Stockings, premiered at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013. It is widely performed by UK amateur companies and is also studied on the Drama GCSE syllabus. In 2016 her play Nell Gwynn won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, after it transferred from the Globe to the West End, starring Gemma Arterton as the eponymous heroine.

As a playwright, Jessica's first play Blue Stockings premiered at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013 and won her an Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright nomination. Nell Gwynn premiered at Shakespeare's Globe in 2015, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and transferred to the West End starring Gemma Arterton. The production received four Olivier nominations, winning Best New Comedy, and is currently being developed as a feature film with Working Title.

In 2012 she won the BAFTA JJ Screenwriting Bursary for which she developed an original screenplay, Summerland. She is currently writing the feature film Nell Gwynn for Working Title, alongside an original feature with Blueprint and Studio Canal and other projects for Fox Searchlight and Monumental Pictures.

After drama school, she worked as Max Stafford-Clark's associate director at Out of Joint, on productions including The Overwhelming at the National Theatre and Andersen's English at Hampstead. In 2006 she set up Red Handed Theatre Company with Katie Bonna, to perform new works and revive lost classics. She was nominated for an Evening Standard Award (Best Director) for her production of The Belle's Stratagem and received the Peter Brook Empty Space Award for Best Ensemble for Red Handed in 2012.

Other plays includes All's Will that Ends Will (Bremen Shakespeare Company), Thomas Tallis (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse), The Playhouse Apprentice (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse) and The Mission about illegal adoptions in the 1920s. Her adaptations include Sense and Sensibility, Far From the Madding Crowd (Watermill), The Secret Garden and Stig of the Dump (Grosvenor Park, Chester).