Grid Iron's Ben Harrison talks Ella Hickson and The Authorised Kate Bane

The promising young dramatist is bound for great things

Ella Hickson. If you don’t know her name already, you’re sure to soon. Author of the award-winning drama Eight – in which eight very distinct characters are explored in monologue – the young dramatist is currently under commission to the Royal Shakespeare Company and acclaimed Headlong Theatre. All this in addition to writing her latest play, The Authorised Kate Bane, for leading Scottish theatre company Grid Iron.

A drama about memory and the construction of family ‘truths’, it is ‘a very brave piece’, says Grid Iron’s artistic director Ben Harrison. ‘She’s really mining her own biography, in terms of trying to figure out what the effect of a divorce is on a child, and how it colours the rest of your life experience’

Hickson is clearly a writer of considerable promise. Harrison believes Kate Bane might just be her breakthrough play. ‘Someone said recently that Ella is on the brink of greatness. This piece could be the big one.’

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