NELL HARDY

Founder

Nell is an ex-homeless actor, writer, theatre-maker and facilitator living, laughing and loving with complex trauma. She began her career from an emergency hostel room six years ago, and if anything has gotten even less sensible since then.

Nell has experienced first hand how quickly our lives can be derailed, how invisible we can become when we are in need, and how slow the road to recovery from social and psychological trauma can be.

She considers herself lucky that, at her most desperate and neglected, her creativity helped her hold onto her truth and to express it to those around her who needed to hear it - those who were also suffering, and those who didn't know how to help.

Beyond her extensive acting credits, she has performed her own and/or co-created work at Arcola Outside, Sadler’s Wells, the Pleasance, Omnibus Theatre, Greenwich Theatre and Poplar Union. Her writing has been commissioned by Immediate Theatre, In Her Strength and Virtual Collaborators Festival. Shows she directed for Jacksons Lane’s young company LAUNCH, which she founded, have played at the Dorfman (NT), artsdepot, Soho Theatre and Jacksons Lane.

Nell's work walks a fine line between the poetic and the everyday to expose audiences to contemporary traumatic experiences in an uncompromising but hopeful way. She tells dangerous stories in safe spaces to uplift the downtrodden, and to unite audiences from different walks of life in empathy, humanity, humour, need, motivation and ambition for a better future.

Her autobiographical solo show NoMad is our inaugural project, and sets the tone for how we hope to learn and share our learning from other silenced voices.