hello, I’m bella.

as a writer and performer, i try to make brave, beautiful work that shines a blazing spotlight on our common humanity, in all its raw, flawed fragility and breathtaking perfection.

i’m known for my unflinching personal honesty, and i enjoy inviting those around me, whether they’re collaborators, audiences or both, to delve deep inside themselves, find the soft, shadowy parts, and explore them with curiosity and kindness. my mission is to cultivate empathy.

My newest passion is writing for screen, and it’s keeping me pretty busy. I’m delighted to have written episode 7 of one of my favourite shows, Sex Education Season 4 for Netflix. I currently have TV projects in development with the BBC, NBCUniversal and Studio Lambert. I was lucky enough to be one of 11 writers selected for the BBC TV Drama Writers Programme 2020, resulting in a script commission for an original drama from the BBC, which I wrote with the support of the fantastic team at Firebird Pictures. I’ve worked with a range of production companies, including Bad Wolf, Happy Prince, The Ink Factory, The Forge, Sid Gentle Films, Two Rivers Media and Mam Tor Productions. I’ve also dabbled in audio drama, after being invited to write an episode of The People Outside, a fiction podcast in which I also performed. As a brown, bisexual woman and mother, and the daughter of a Black, disabled, lesbian, I’m especially drawn to stories that centre dramatically rich characters that have traditionally been marginalised.

I began my creative career as an actor, training at LAMDA, and I’ve enjoyed climbing inside the minds and bodies of many different characters on stage and screen. I hadn’t planned to be a writer, but my parents both died, and wrestling my emotions into words felt like the natural way of dealing with it, so I wrote my first play, My World Has Exploded A Little Bit. I bloody loved it, and lots of other people did too; it got rave reviews from critics and audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe and on a subsequent national tour supported by Arts Council England. One of my favourite things was hugging audience members on their way out at the end. I love hugs. And people.

I made that show with a good friend and incredibly talented director and dramaturg, Donnacadh O’Briain, and our theatre company, All About You, was born.

Fuelled by the new fire in my belly sparked by writing, we made a second play, with our amazing Associate Artist — the obscenely talented and incredibly generous Sara Alexander — called Rejoicing At Her Wondrous Vulva The Young Woman Applauded Herself. I didn’t hug the audience at the end of that one, but we did invite them all to sit on the stage and have a pretty intense chat about their feelings around sexual desire, and once again that was one of my favourite bits; moving and invigorating.

We’re currently developing our third show, a theatrical experiment in vulnerability, inspired by my mum’s astonishing life, called Arms Flung Wide.

I also host an intermittent podcast, Rejoicing With Bella, available wherever you get your podcasts.