Ann Jellicoe (Patricia Ann Jellicoe) Biography

British playwright, born in Middlesborough; she trained as an actress at the Central School of Speech and Drama, and worked as a theatre director before turning to writing. She made her name with The Sport of My Mad Mother (1958), a fantasy about teenage violence, and The Knack (1962), a whimsical comedy about sexual prowess, male rivalries, and the limitations of a young English Casanova eventually bettered by his awkward, unconfident flatmate. Shelley: Or the Idealist, a documentary drama which takes a somewhat sceptical view of the poet and his circle, followed in 1966. Since the West End failure of The Giveaway (1969), a comedy about the emotional tribulations of a family which has won a decade's supply of breakfast cereal, she has written plays for children, translated work by Ibsen and Chekhov, and become active as a director, producer, and general creative force in community theatre in the West Country, presenting (among other plays) the world première of David Edgar's Entertaining Strangers in Dorchester.