Michael John O'Neill

Michael John O'Neill is a writer, producer, and cultural programmer from the north coast of Ireland, now based in Scotland. His debut play Akedah, a poignant exploration of two sisters confronting their past within a megachurch in County Antrim, won the 2019 Bruntwood Prize for Original New Voice. It premiered at Hampstead Theatre in London in early 2023. O'Neill's second play, This Is Paradise, set against the backdrop of the ratification of the Good Friday Agreement, tells the story of a young woman who is asked to save the man who nearly destroyed her. The play received critical acclaim during its run at the Traverse Theatre as part of the 2021 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, winning the BBC Popcorn Award, and was revived at the Traverse for the 2022 Fringe.

O'Neill is currently the 2025 IASH/Traverse Creative Fellow and a recipient of an Almeida Theatre Genesis Foundation commission. With support from an SSP@50 fellowship, he is developing a new play that explores the devastating effects of deindustrialisation for workers in the oil and gas industry. He is also an alumnus of the BBC Voices programme (2022), was shortlisted for the Element Pictures NI Writers’ Award (2022), and is developing an original TV drama with House Productions.

In addition to his work as a writer, O'Neill has extensive experience as a producer. He has toured productions both in the UK and internationally and currently collaborates with Screen Scotland on Screen Fringe, an initiative designed to connect TV and film producers with emerging talent and new intellectual property at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. From 2014 to 2020, he served as Artistic Producer at the Tron Theatre, where he founded the company’s artistic development department and played a key role in commissioning and developing numerous productions, including the multi-award-winning Pride & Prejudice* (*Sort of).