About

Ellie Keel

Productions

Founded in May 2019, Ellie Keel Productions specialises in commissioning, developing, and producing new plays of the highest quality. Our award-winning work is presented in London, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and across the UK and internationally. We work with top-flight writers, directors and creative teams to make shows that audiences enjoy and remember.

Executive Producer Ellie Keel’s selected credits are the sell-out shows HOTTER and FITTER by Mary Higgins and Ell Potter (Soho Theatre), Collapsible by Margaret Perry (VAULT Festival, HighTide’s Disruption Festival in Edinburgh and Aldeburgh, and subsequently at the Dublin Fringe and the Bush Theatre, London), Anna Bella Eema by Lisa D’Amour (Arcola Theatre), Redefining Juliet (Barbican Centre), Callisto: a queer epic by Hal Coase (Pleasance, Edinburgh & Arcola Theatre, London), and Mrs Dalloway by Hal Coase (Arcola Theatre).

In October 2019 Ellie Keel founded The Women’s Prize for Playwriting. The prize is co-produced by EKP and Paines Plough in association with Sonia Friedman Productions. 

Prior to founding EKP, Ellie worked with Thelma Holt Ltd, the Cameron Mackintosh Foundation and the Oxford Playhouse. She also worked in programming and marketing for OperaUpClose and as a producer at The North Wall. She read German and Italian at Brasenose College, Oxford.

In August 2019, EKP presented a season of four shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Collapsible by Margaret Perry, in co-production with HighTide; Son of Dyke by Jordan Waller; HOTTER by Mary Higgins and Ell Potter; and Where to Belong by Victor Esses, in co-production with Victor Esses.

Ellie Keel has also produced large-scale, site-specific plays with The Big House Theatre Company, a charity working with vulnerable young people. Her credits for The Big House include Loose Lips by Katherine Soper and the award-winning Bullet Tongue by Sonya Hale and Andrew Day.

In 2017 Ellie co-founded Heretic Voices at Arcola Theatre, an international competition to produce and publish the best new writing for the stage in monologue form. The judging panel comprised Michael Billington, Lolita Chakrabarti, Monica Dolan, and Mel Kenyon. The competition attracted 1,176 entries. The winning scripts were A Hundred Words for Snow by Tatty Hennessy, directed by Max Gill; Woman Caught Unaware by Annie Fox, directed by Jessica Edwards; and Dean McBride by Sonya Hale, directed by Roy Alexander Weise.

In 2016 Ellie co-founded (with Lucy Maycock, Ria Parry and John Hoggarth) Alchymy Festival at The North Wall to support and showcase the work of some of the most talented early-career theatre-makers in the country. Alchymy Festival is now thriving in its fourth year.

[...] produced by Ellie Keel (always a good sign)

Lyn Gardner

A Rising Star of 2020

Theatre Weekly

Keel has some sturdy hits under her belt’

Alex WoodWhatsOnStage
Productions

Some Key shows

COLLAPSIBLE
Bush Theatre
2020
SAP
VAULT Festival
2020
IN LIPSTICK
The Pleasance
2019
COLLAPSIBLE
Assembly, Edinburgh
2019
FITTER
Soho Theatre
2019
ANNA BELLA EEMA
Arcola Theatre
2019
HOTTER
Soho Theatre and Underbelly, Edinburgh
2019
SON OF DYKE
VAULT Festival and Underbelly, Edinburgh
2019
WHERE TO BELONG
Summerhall, Edinburgh
2019
BULLET TONGUE
The Big House
2018
REDEFINING JULIET
Barbican Centre
2018
MRS DALLOWAY
Arcola Theatre
2018
LOOSE LIPS
The Big House
2018
Venues

We’ve played at and toured

The Abbey Theatre, Dublin

Arcola Theatre, London

Assembly, Edinburgh

Barbican Centre, London

Bedales School, Petersfield

Bush Theatre, London

Curve, Leicester

Brainchild Festival, Bentley

Farnham Maltings

HighTide Festival, Aldeburgh

The Lowry, Manchester

The Marlowe, Canterbury

Norden Farm Centre for the Arts, Maidenhead

Pleasance, London

Quarterhouse, Folkestone

Soho Theatre, London

Southbank Centre, London

South Street Arts Centre, Reading

Stantonbury Campus Theatre

Summerhall, Edinburgh

Theatre503, London

The North Wall, Oxford

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Underbelly, Edinburgh

Unity Theatre, Liverpool

VAULT Festival, London