“Impassioned” - Guardian
“A brilliant storyteller” - A Younger Theatre
Ella Dorman-Gajic is an award-winning writer, performer, facilitator and creative producer working across theatre, screen, audio and poetry. A British artist of Serbian and Austrian heritage, Ella’s work is grounded in the female experience, with an interest in sexual politics, coming-of-age and immigration. Her 5-star stage play, Trade, was developed with students at Drama Centre London. It went on an Arts Council Funded UK tour in 2023, starting with a sell-out at The Pleasance, and finishing with another sell-out show at Norwich Arts Centre. Trade is published with Salamander Street. She won Best Screenplay at the Healdsburg International Film Awards (judged by Tom Waits) for her debut short film, Back of the Net. The film is currently in the festival circuit; it’s been selected for several BIFA and BAFTA-qualifying festivals and has picked up four awards. Ella is represented by Macfarlane Chard as a scriptwriter.
As an actor, she plays Tam in the Radio 4 Drama series Song of the Reed (listen!), co-starring Sir Mark Rylance and Sophie Okonedo. She has starred in three multi-award-winning short films, including The Boy with a Camera for a Face, narrated by Stephen Berkoff, which was screened at film festivals globally and on Channel 4. She’s represented by Top Talent Agency as an actor.
She’s performed her poetry sets around the country, written numerous poetry commissions and co-hosts/produces Off The Chest, a sell-out London poetry night supported by Arts Council England. She is an alumnus of Roundhouse Poetry Collective and Apples & Snakes Writing Room. At the age of 19, Ella’s debut poetry show Did I Choose These Shoes? won The Pebble Trust Talent Award for Brighton Fringe and went to Edinburgh Fringe in 2017.
Ella works as a facilitator, dramaturg and tutor, teaching drama to children and mentoring adults. She was a professional mentor for the University of Westminster’s SoH New Writing Festival and is currently a lead workshop facilitator for Broken Silence Theatre’s Playwright’s Hive and her new writing group Just Write It!, held at the Albany’s Deptford Lounge. She is a lead teacher at youth theatre school Play the Stage, and has written and directed plays for children and young people. She offers 1:1 dramaturgical feedback on scripts.
Ella holds a first-class degree in Scriptwriting & Performance from UEA, is an alumnus of National Youth Theatre, New Writing South’s Young Writers, and was Broken Silence Theatre’s first Writer in Residence. She was an Associate Artist at Bathway Theatre.
When not doing these things, you can find her between Peckham and Brighton, eating vinegary chips or badly singing along to Fleetwood Mac.
★★★★★ “[Trade] should propel writer Ella Dorman-Gajic into being one of those capable people in high demand with the makers of the best of modern theatre.”
- Norwich Eye
★★★★★ “Bold and brilliantly written… fierce, unapologetic and gripping, Trade is a vital and timely piece of theatre.”
★★★★“A Bloody Shambles by Ella Doman-Gajic is an impassioned broadside against period poverty”
- The Guardian
★★★★ “Complex, challenging and more than a little surprising… Trade is a dark, haunting play in many ways, yet there is also light and humour sprinkled through it.”
- The Queer Review
Back of the Net | Trailer
Maya, a passionate young footballer, is given an opportunity that could offer her the future she’s always dreamed of. But now, the one person who inspired her pursuit of this dream, her grandmother, is the only thing holding her back. A heartfelt, bitingly human story of care, female aspiration and the evolution of women’s football in a male-dominated world.
Back of the Net is a new short film directed by Klara Kaliger and written by Ella Dorman-Gajic.
Executive Produced by Lewes Depot Cinema, Football scholar Jean Williams, Rob MacDonald, Sushant Sharma Bhattarai and Ella Dorman-Gajic.
