I am a writer and actor for stage & television and a producer, narrator & consultant of audio content, spanning Scotland and the USA as a dual citizen. I use voice work as a foundation, and create many iterations from the same Ip - live, digital and hybrid format. It is my wildest dream to serve with storytelling: authentically giving voice to the those who are unrepresented and creating appropriate social impact where possible.
My creative practice embraces transformative stories, and often features real life survivors of extreme human experience, honouring their testimony. I create work that intends to honour the voices of those who are not normally heard, stories that are steeped in many years of experience and layers but still need the power of public acknowledgement and ritual around personal narrative that theatre can bring. Stories that become a way of telling many people’s stories. I hope to always find the funny, the poignant and the heartfelt even in the most dire of circumstances, so that dismissing someone as a victim of tragedy is difficult, and experiencing what authentically connects us with hope and insight is more possible.
I trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and I'm known for my acting work in HBO’s The Newsroom, and feature films How To Train Your Dragon 2, Dr Strange, Paddington, Elena Undone, A Perfect Ending. As a producer and narrator I am known for 6 nominations and 3 Audie Awards, and 11 Earphone awards and as a story consultant for Critic's Choice Nominated Documentary Holy Hell (Sundance 2016, debuted by CNN and bought by Netflix, https://edition.cnn.com/shows/cnn-films-holy-hell).
As a playwright, my first full length play was entitled Heroine and debuted in Scotland and at The Kennedy Center. www.maryjanewells.org/horn-toot.html, www.heroinetheplay.com/mission-statement.html
When Heroine was invited to debut at the Kennedy Center in Feb 2020 after a Scottish tour, it had meaningful engagement with Scottish Members of Parliament, the US Military, Members of Congress and The Pentagon. Congresswoman Jackie Speier, a critical panel member, went on to push through groundbreaking new legislation to reform the access to justice for sexual assault survivors in the US Military some months afterwards. www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/us/politics/military-sexual-assault-congress.html
I was an invited speaker-performer of to open the UN CONFERENCE ABOUT SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN CONFLICT, LONDON with Angelina Jolie and William Hague in 2015, at TRUMP’S INAUGURATION as a secret protester sponsored by The Guardian in 2016, to open the SHAMELESS FESTIVAL at BLOOMSBURY THEATRE, LONDON in 2022 and as a talk for Maya Soetoro-Ng (sister to Barack Obama) for seedsofpeace.org after they listened to Heroine's audiobook, for the 2023 Open Door / ASCN International Webinar and Working Roundtable Program on Military, Veterans and Family Wellbeing in Australia, and I am Keynote speaker at the 2024 Symposium for Transforming Military Cultures (TMC) in association with Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in September 2024.
It is the testimony from Heroine's protagonist, the emails and letters I have received from survivors which is the most important reason to continue to create using voice work, that can have an impact in the right way. I was left a note on stage door in 2017 which read "This play gave me hope for what I went through." It is a privilege to tell someone's story and a responsibility to harness its power correctly.
With new show The Good Girl, partnering with The Kennedy Center, I hope to reach out to carers of those living with dementia and provide a platform for their experience and mine after caring for my late father for 4 years. After covid, there is a conversation about care and the future I think we all need to have. This project is for carers and comes with a show, a novel and 4 audio offerings.
Voice work underpins and ties every strand of all the work I do together.
maryjanewells.org heroinetheplay.com holyhellthedocumentary.com
