Stella Feehily

I’m supposed to be interviewing Stella Feehily about her new play, Bang Bang Bang, which explores the lives of human rights researchers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but so far she’s asking most of the questions. We’re sat in the rehearsal room of Out of Joint’s north London offices, and having discovered that I visited the country with an NGO several years ago she is now gently interrogating me in her subtle Irish brogue. The role of interviewer is clearly one the playwright is comfortable playing. Her densely researched script grew out of hours of conversations with aid workers, journalists, photojournalists, human rights defenders and government advisors. She set out to tell their story: “I just wanted to make people aware that when they see that person on the news, saying those three lines, that they are actually juggling so many other things. They haven’t just appeared there in Africa.”