Madeleine Farnhill

Madeleine Farnhill is a playwright and actor from Yorkshire. Her first play The Hunger ran for a sold out run in Sheffield in 2021, after which she co-founded Black Bright Theatre, a Sheffield based, female-led theatre company for whom she is Artistic Director and Writer. Black Bright toured The Hunger around the North in 2022 and has since been selected for Assembly’s programme at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2023, where Madeleine will perform the role of ‘Megan’. She will continue her collaboration with the director of Stag, Natalie Simone, a pairing that infuses the darkness of her writing with an unapologetic energy. The Hunger has received highly positive audience reception and critical praise for its “disarmingly horrifying” honesty (Haywire Theatre). Her second play How to Get to Eudemonia, created and directed by Ben Newman, was a commission for Mountview’s Director’s Showcase in June 2023. Her short horror monologue Something in the Cheese was broadcast on the critically-acclaimed podcast At Your Peril in 2022.

Madeleine primarily writes regional, female-led theatre that is dark and provocative. Inspired by folk-horror cinema, Madeleine seeks to bring a quieter, weirder horror experience to the stage that is charged with gender and environmentalist politics. Madeleine’s love for the weird often culminates in speculative worlds that hover above the ordinary, and she is heavily influenced by British mythology. 

During her time at BOVTS her voice has gained further clarity, confidence and courage. She has felt privileged to represent the North at the school and to expand her toolkit with screen and radio. Following her run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Madeleine’s upcoming projects include a northern-based community piece, international theatre and site-specific horror.