“Laura Forrest-Hay has a great understanding of narrative and appreciates how vital music is in animation.”
Tim Fernee, director of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Irish Times
Laura Forrest-Hay has composed music for over 30 theatre productions, numerous documentaries, animations, short films and a feature film. Most recently, she worked as Music Associate at the RSC on The Tempest, starring Alex Kingston, directed by Elizabeth Freestone. She scored the feature doc Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster for Voltage Films/Abramorama/Shout Pictures. The film had an extended cinema run in the USA in 2021 and is now available to watch on streaming platforms.
Initially trained as a professional actor/musician, (Exeter University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama), Laura quickly moved into composing for theatre. She worked for all the main theatre companies in Ireland (where she lived for 10 years) including the Abbey, Druid and Rough Magic. Three of the productions that Laura worked on in Ireland received the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Production.
“…Laura Forrest-Hay’s score is expressive not of Gothic horror but of the joyful creativity which might have been Mary Shelley’s.”
Michael Billington THE GUARDIAN on “Frankenstein’s Mothers”
She has worked with many international theatre directors including Garry Hynes, Lynne Parker, Dominic Dromgoole and Katie Mitchell. Laura gained a post-graduate diploma in film-scoring from UCLA/Screen Training Ireland under the tutelage of Don Ray and Bob Drasnin and moved into scoring for film, TV and animation. She wrote the music for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a 30 minute animation commissioned by C4 and S4C, produced by Moving Still Animation. The film won a BAFTA in 2002 for Best Animation. She went on to work with the director, Tim Fernee, on another successful animation, Rowlandson Rides Again, which has been shown all over Europe including the Pompidou Centre.
Laura has collaborated on six theatre shows with the award-winning writer and director, Jessica Swale. She composed the score for Hamlet at Shakespeare’s Globe, directed by Dominic Dromgoole. This production ran for over two years travelling to every country in the world (bar 2). In 2018, her work, Coldfall Wood Cantata premiered at the Royal Albert Hall featuring 2000 young musicians from the borough of Haringey.
Laura’s interest in stories and storytellers has given her a unique skill in interpretation. She can work with musicians of all standards from professional orchestral players, to folk musicians and non-music readers. Her music has been the subject of a half-hour programme for Ireland’s classical music station, Lyric FM. She has composed original music for digital advertising agency, Work-Club, scoring their Plum Vision campaign. She has been a member of bands, The Big Geraniums, produced by Donal Lunny, The Headless Chickens (with Thom Yorke on guitar and vocals) and Jack L. The Big Geraniums performed 2 reunion gigs in 2019 in Dublin and Galway and are mixing the Live Album from these gigs.
Laura is based in London and Dublin.