Nell Leyshon is a novelist and playwright, born in Glastonbury and now based in Dorset. She has written a number of plays for BBC Radios 3 and 4. Her stage plays include Comfort Me with Apples, which won the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright award in 2005 and an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's short story Don't Look Now. In 2010, she became the first female playwright to be commissioned to write for Shakespeare's Globe since 1599.

Set in the notorious 18th Century lunatic asylum that gives the play its name, Bedlam is the story of how a cruel and unusual institution starts to crumble, after the arrival of an unassuming country girl.
Nell Leyshon's new play is an anarchic tale of madness and sanity, authority and incarceration and the arbitrary lines that separate them.
Full of violence, romance and reverie, Bedlam will make history this September when it becomes the first ever production by a female writer to be staged at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.