Amy Hailwood

Amy Hailwood is a theatre director and socially engaged facilitator based in Greater Manchester, with a strong commitment to making theatre in the North-West. She creates dynamic, moving and richly textured theatre, with a social change focus.

A quality of hybridity is fundamental to Amy’s perspective and practice, which crosses conventional boundaries of professional and community theatre, to enrich both. Running through the varied subject, form and scale of Amy’s work, is a politically driven desire to relate to audiences and participants as citizens not consumers, and an invitation to enter into risky conversations within a safe, playful space.

Directing credits include: LOCAL by Liz Richardson (Regional Tour 2025), Joy Unspeakable (Ordinary Glory, Hyper-Local Tour, 2024), Re: Discover Festival (Winner of Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Impact, Streetwise Opera & Bridgewater Hall, 2024), Today These Streets Are Ours by Joshua Val Martin (Royal Exchange Manchester, 2023), Remote by Stef Smith (Octagon Theatre Bolton & Lowry for NT Connections, 2022), XYV (Hope Mill Theatre, 2021), The Present (Octagon Theatre Bolton, 2019), After Birth (Co:LAB, Royal Exchange Manchester, 2018), Memories of Partition (Royal Exchange Manchester, 2017), Faraway, So Close (Old Fire Station, Oxford, 2014).

Assistant Directing credits: Parliament Square (Royal Exchange Theatre and Bush, 2017, dir. Jude Christian), A Christmas Carol (Octagon Theatre Bolton, 2017, dir. Ben Occhipinti).

Amy has extensive experience of facilitating and co-creating theatre with children, young people and older adults, as well as various marginalised groups. She has worked with the Octagon Theatre Bolton, Lowry, Streetwise Opera, Collective Encounters and many others in this capacity. Amy is also founder and Artistic Director of theatre-for-social-change company Ordinary Glory, a mentor for Arts Emergency and a member of SDUK.

Amy is thrilled to be selected for Origins 2026 and excited for what the year will bring!