JOY NESBITT
WRITER
stage
Blood of my Blood
(Formerly titled: Good)
2026
Verity Bargate Award Longlist
Soho Theatre - London, UK
Theatre503 International Playwriting Award Longlist
Theatre503 - London, UK
Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting Longlist
Royal Exchange Theatre - London, UK
Bullock Creek, SC. 1862. Ginnie is an enslaved woman enwrapped in a 10 year relationship with her captor, Doc. Navigating oppression of plantation life with 5 children, Ginnie attempts to conduct a romantic relationship with Doc as the civil war rages around the plantation. On the eve of emancipation, she must make a decision: to stay with her captor or free herself. Based on the true family history of the playwright, Good explores freedom, coercion, and ways in which Black women have had to navigate misogynoir throughout history.
This play will premiere in the Upstairs of the Royal Court Theatre in London, UK, as part of their 70th Anniversary Season in 2026.
This piece was written and performed for the Rachel Baptiste Programme at Smock Alley Theatre. A reading was directed by Annie Ryan at Smock Alley Theatre.
Stilt
2025
"What is truly impressive about this play is how Nesbitt and Griffith adeptly walk a fine line, depicting a deeply unsettling scenario without ever, in my view – and others may feel differently – crossing a line into gratuitously sickening scenes."
Oregon Artswatch
"This brave play brilliantly takes on the seemingly impossible task of uncovering the implicit misogyny in an old tale, while showing how it’s connected to the ugly narratives that are being spun today."
Oregon Artswatch
Stilt is a thriller that reimagines the Rumpelstiltskin myth as a modern Irish cautionary tale.
TJ is obsessed with uncovering his true birth name, which was lost when he was adopted as a child. His fixation with the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale leads him down a dark path, fueled by political extremism.
At its core, Stilt explores the power of names and how the loss or reclamation of one’s true identity affects selfhood. The play's themes are deeply intertwined with contemporary Irish life, reflecting the tension between the country’s historical and cultural legacies and the modern issues it faces.
This play was commissioned by Corrib Theatre in Portland, OR, for their 2025 season.
Scenes with Black Folk
(formerly titled: Meditations on Somebodiness)
2025
An afrosurrealist play about what it means to be in the process of identity-making as a Black person in America (and any other place).
Premiered at the Camden Fringe Festival 2025. Previously workshopped at the BIPOC Early Career Theater-makers Program at The Williamstown Theater Festival 2021, Workshopped in 2022 (The Lir Academy), 2024 (Irish Theatre Institute), and 2025 (Riverside Studios R&D).
"A beautiful, uncomfortable and confronting cabaret on the uniquely human experience of blackness [...] Scenes with Black Folk is a unique, obscure and inspired piece of work that just can’t be missed if you get the chance. "
The Obscurity
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
"In a theatrical environment that is too often afraid to ask deep questions of race, preferring instead to just agree that “things are very bad”, Scenes With Black Folk offers a nuanced and complex study of modern black Britain from a Gen Z lens."
The Reviews Hub
JULIUS CAESAR VARIETY SHOW
2024
Fishamble New Writing Award Shortlist
Fishamble - Dublin, Ireland
Radical Spirit Award Shortlist
Project Arts Centre - Dublin, Ireland
Solas Nua New Voices Award Shortlist
Solas Nua - Washington, D.C.
A Black actor, a Woman actor, and a Straight White Male actor walk into a Shakespeare audition. What could go wrong?
Three actors from diverse backgrounds audition for a role in Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Amidst a riot outside the theatre, they face an intensely respected director who is determined to reinvent the play through “unorthodox” methods, often at the expense of the actors' personal integrity. The audition becomes a battleground where the actors' identities are scrutinized, with an accompanist intensifying the director’s demands. As they navigate the director’s expectations, the actors grapple with how their identities alter the meaning of a play and the role that diversity and inclusion plays in reshaping the theatre industry.
Dear Rosa
2024
"Nesbitt’s snappily sharp script, like Morgan Parker’s poetry, navigating the personal and political life of the modern black woman with insight and ease."
The Arts Review
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
"the writing and the playing are themselves so clever and so committed"
The Irish Times
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A young Black Irish woman writes letters to Rosa Parks to apologise for being a "Bad Black," but as she writes more letters, she finds that her silence in the face of microaggressions is worse than speaking up.
Part confessional, part peep-show booth, and completely visceral, 12 short 5-minute plays were performed by one actor for one audience member at a time in a purpose-built booth as part of Cork Midsummer Festival 2024.
Theatre for One: This Ireland featured the six original writers from the 2019 presentation at Cork Midsummer Festival (Marina Carr, Stacey Gregg, Emmet Kirwan, Louise Lowe, Mark O’Rowe and Enda Walsh), working with an electric line-up of new writers (Iseult Deane, Susannah Al Fraihat, Aoibhéann McCann, Joy Nesbitt, Ois O’Donoghue and Aoife Delany Reade), whose short plays were selected from a nationwide public call-out.
One booth, 12 voices and a uniquely intimate experience for every single audience member.
Barbie, Girl
2022
Short play performed as part of a collaboration between The Williamstown Theater Festival 2022 and the Williams College Museum of Art entitled Working in Desire: The Political Economy of Black Feminine Labor.
This piece was directed by Veshonte Brown and performed by Jessica Caputo. View the performance here. (Starting at 10:07)
Speed Dating
2020
Short play about online speed dating workshopped at the Harvard Black Playwrights Festival 2021.
Call, Response, and Go-Go Live: Making a Musical Movement for Black Lives in Washington, D.C. in 2020
2020
Honors joint thesis written in the departments of Anthropology and Music at Harvard University. The thesis documents the work of the Washington, D.C. organization “Long Live GoGo” in the summer and fall of 2020. An engaged scholarly project with rich theoretical dimensions, it highlights Go-Go’s recurring role in resisting antiBlackness and the organization’s grassroots techniques for generating political momentum and strategy.