Polly Wright

Polly Wright is a theatre director, performer, facilitator, writer, lecturer, and researcher. She co-founded Women and Theatre in Birmingham, where she co-wrote and performed many cabaret sketches and plays. She collaborated with Women and Theatre again to co-write a play which celebrated their history called After 30 Years at the Birmingham Rep in October 2014.

Since setting up The Hearth Centre she has been the sole playwright and producer of 8 plays on mental health, performed in Birmingham Venues, including the Rep, the Drum and mac Birmingham. Hearth was shortlisted for a Mind Media Award in 2008 following a tour of Northern Ireland, and Polly was short listed as a mental health hero herself in 2010 and a Depression Alliance award in 2014.

Polly has published 5 short stories with Tindal Street Press, including the TSFG anthology “The Sea in Birmingham” in 2013. She has also published 6 poems in various anthologies and four academic articles and chapters on the uses of drama in research and pedagogy.

The Hearth Centre was granted contracts from 2007 onwards to develop Reading for Well Being in secure and community mental health settings in Birmingham. She now lectures on the shared reading approach and its links to creative writing internationally

Polly has been a visiting lecturer at Birmingham University Medical School in Literature in Medicine. Her play “Revolving Door” about early intervention in schizophrenia is now used annually as part of the medical school curriculum with the whole psychiatry rotation in collaboration with Dr Erin Turner.