Hannah Khalil, Playwright

LATEST NEWS

The Not Beckett Festival launches at the Jermyn Street Theatre on 17 October 2024, an international rolling world premiere of 5 new short plays, challenging and expanding the idea of what Irishness looks and sounds like. Writers include Olwen Fouéré, Jennifer Barclay, Nicola McCartney and Felispeaks. Hannah acts as co-artistic director of the festival with Jennifer Barclay and has written one of the plays. The festival's Creative Producer is Alison Holder.

After Jermyn Street the festival will travel to Reading and the Samuel Beckett research centre, Paris, Irish Rep in NYC, Dublin (in association with Fishamble and the Lir) and Philadelphia (in association with Villanova University). The project is in collaboration with the Samuel Beckett Research Centre at Reading University. The plays will be published in an anthology by Methuen. Full details at www.notbeckett.com. 

Elsewhere, Hannah's new play My English Persian Kitchen (pictured) transferred to Soho Theatre London from September to October 2024 after a sell out, award-winning (Entertainment Now Outstanding Theatre Production), critically acclaimed run at the Traverse as part of the Edinburgh Festival 2024. It is one of the Evening Standard's picks of the Edinburgh transfers this year.

This year also saw Hannah's first opera for young people The Great Stink tour the UK, a historical and hilarious piece about the pollution of the Thames directed by Valentina Ceschi with music by Omar Shahryar design by Sam Wilde it was produced by English Touring Opera. 

Hannah's latest radio play A Wireless War is available on BBC Sounds. The drama follows Val Gielgud and the BBC's company of radio actors as they are evacuated to the countryside in 1939.

Other recent work includes Trouf, a Tunisian version of Scenes from 75* Years  as part of Shubbak Fesival 2023 - despite visa problems read the full story here. Meanwhile, her new play for young people co-written with Chris White from the words of Shakespeare Wood of Words was on at the RSC performed by the associate schools in July 2023, and the text is available to buy now.

Hannah was writer in residence at the Globe 2022. In December 2022 her play Hakawatis - a retelling of 1001 Nights played at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, while her adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's The Fir Tree returned to the main stage at the Globe making Hannah the first writer other than Shakespeare to have had her work on in both spaces at the Globe simultaneously. Further work at the Globe includes an adaptation of Shakespeare and Fletcher's Henry VIII while A Museum in Baghdad played at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2019/20 making Hannah the first woman of Arab heritage to have a main stage play at the company. 

Previous work includes Interference at National Theatre of Scotland, The Scar Test at Soho Theatre and Scenes from 68* Years directed by Chris White which ran at the Arcola in Dalston to critical and audience acclaim. It was nominated for the James Tait Black award.

Scenes has subsequently been produced at Golden Thread Theatre in San Francisco (April 2019) and it had a Tunisian production, called Trouf, directed by Chris White and Ghazi Zagbani which was performing at theatres across Tunis in autumn and winter 2019, and continues to be performed in rep (supported by British Council Tunisia and AFAC and produced by Alia Al Zougbi).

Radio plays include The Unwelcome, Last of the Pearl Fishers and The Deportation Room all for BBC Radio 4. Television work includes multiple episodes of the Channel 4 drama Hollyoaks.

Hannah was Writer on attachment at the Bush Theatre as part of Project 2036 from 2016-2017. She was awarded The Arab British Centre's prize for Culture 2017, and is under commission to Soho Theatre, The RSC, The Young Vic, The Orange Tree, Tamasha and BBC Radio 4 as well as developing new original dramas for television.

Hannah was also a Creative Fellow of the Samuel Beckett Archive for 2021/2022 and was named Heimbold Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University, Spring 2021. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022. The first anthology of her work Hannah Khalil Plays of Arabic Heritage is published by Methuen.