Stella Feehily

Playwright, Screenwriter, and Actor
Stella Freehily sits looking left. She has sholder-length auburn hair and a soft smile.

Stella Feehily is the playwright of Hampstead Theatre’s current production, The Lightest Element (Sept. 5, 2024-Oct. 12, 2024). This biographical play about the life and career of Dr. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin is centered around 1958, when she was appointed the Phillips Professor of Astronomy and became the first female chair of a department at Harvard. The play extends and reaches back from this time to create a portrait of one woman whose brilliance and determination allowed her to transgress the patriarchal structures of Harvard and McCarthy-Era America. Feehily's previous plays often explore social and political interests, where the untold stories of female identity frequently lie.

Stella Feehily is a playwright and screenwriter. Duck, Stella’s first full-length play premiered in an Out of Joint and Royal Court co-production at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, before playing at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, the Royal Court Theatre and The Peacock Theatre, Dublin. Since then she has written O Go My Man (Royal Court Theatre) Catch (written with four other female playwrights) at the Royal Court, Dreams of Violence (Soho Theatre), Bang, Bang, Bang (Royal Court) and This May Hurt a Bit (a play about the National Health Service), which toured nationally before opening at the St James Theatre, London. Other works include  How To Get Ahead In Politics - Arts Theatre, and adaptations of Love And A Bottle for LAMDA's long project, Coppélia for Ballet Ireland and Claudio Tolcachir’s The Omission of the Family Coleman, performed at the Theatre Royal Bath in March 2019. For Irish National Opera she wrote the libretto for Close, a short opera composed by Hannah Peel.

Radio plays include Sweet Bitter for Lyric FM, Julia Roberts’ Teeth for Radio 3 and All of These Things for International Arts Partnership.

Television includes developments with BBC3, Blue Ink, Expectation and FilmNation. She is developing a film with Picture Locked Pics about surfing set in 1980s Ireland.