Nancy Bell
Saint Louis, MO
Playwright-in-Residence, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis
Biography

Nancy’s award-winning contemporary adaptations of Shakespeare, The New World,  Old Hearts Fresh, Good in Everything, The World Begun, and Remember Me were commissioned and produced by Shakespeare Festival St. Louis where she is Playwright-in-Residence.  Her play, Venus, was a finalist for the Next Generation Playwriting Prize 2012.  Her one act with novelist Peter Grandbois, Present Tense, was a winner of the first annual LaBute New Play Festival in 2013. Mutual Consent, also with Peter Grandbois, was produced by California Repertory Theatre in 2015. She is now working on a sixth commission for Shakespeare Festival St. Louis to be produced in June 2017.

She is the also the author of three plays for families and youth, The Runaway Cupcake: A Play About Eating for Families Who Eat (OnSite Theatre Company) Found at Sea (St. Louis Symphony) and A Most Outrageous Fit of Madness (Shakespeare Festival St. Louis Education Tour)

Nancy is a transplant to St. Louis from Los Angeles, where she had been living and working as an actress for thirteen years.  New York theatre credits include work onstage at Manhattan Theatre Club, New York Theatre Workshop, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Tribeca Lab and elsewhere.  She has worked in regional theatres all over the country, including South Coast Repertory, Berkeley Repertory, Geffen Playhouse, Pasadena Playhouse, Hartford Stage Company, The Old Globe, Dallas Theatre Center, McCarter Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse, and ACT, among others. 

On television, she portrayed the role of Susan Bates on the long-running classic soap opera, The Guiding Light.  Other television credits include Numbers, The Medium, Huff, The Bold and the Beautiful, Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, Star Trek Voyager, Chicago Hope, Mad About You, and Newsradio, among others. 

Nancy is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Saint Louis University, where she both directs and teaches acting, voice, and speech.

 

Successes

Awarded 2016 Artist Residency at Wildacres Retreat in Little Switzerland, NC.