Helen Banner

Helen is an emerging freelance writer-director and multi media artist working in theatre, opera and film. She grew up in the British Channel Islands and studied at Cambridge University and the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, where she completed an MFA in Dramatic Writing and was awarded the John Golden Playwriting Award. She is an associate artist at New Georges.

Helen writes fast paced plays and operas that frequently showcase women making high stakes political and ethical decisions. Her work has been developed at New Georges, the Drama League, the O'Neill Theater Center, Fresh Ground Pepper, the Wild Project, Dixon Place, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Lark, the Great Plains Theatre Conference and the Last Frontier Theatre Conference. She is an alumna of the Ingram New Works Lab at Nashville Repertory Theater and the JAM at New Georges. Helen has been a Finalist and/or a Semi-Finalist for the Newman/Woodward Prize, the Leah Ryan FEWW Prize, the Stanley Drama Award, the P73 Playwriting Fellowship and for an Interact 20/20 Commission.

Helen is a co-founder of the Byzantine Choral Project which makes epic theater/music/dance pieces for large, diverse casts of women and non-binary voices: www.byzantinechoralproject.com. They are currently 2018-2021 Archive Residents at the New Ohio/IRT Theaters developing, ICONS/IDOLS, a choral play tetralogy about the purple Byzantine empresses. You can listen to BCP’s latest twelve-part audio drama Icons/Idols: Irene on all major streaming platforms.