title: Irene Coates
text: # Irene Coates
  
  Irene Coates (née Gregory; 23 March 1925 - 18 June 2019) was an English playwright, poet, painter, feminist and environmentalist. She is the author of 14 plays and four books, perhaps best known is her biography Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf?: A Case for the Sanity of Virginia Woolf.
  
  ## Biography
  
  Irene Coates grew up in a bohemian family in London on the fringe of the Bloomsbury Group. In the 1940s she ran the Cambridge Drama Centre. She wrote 14 plays between 1961–81, which were produced among others by the Royal Shakespeare Company and performed at the Edinburgh Festival. She migrated to Australia in 1982 and was Writer in Residence (drama) at Nepean in 1998. She was the sister-in-law and aunt respectively of the painters Ivon Hitchens and John Hitchens.
  
  ## Works
  
  ### Books
  
  Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf?: A Case for the Sanity of Virginia Woolf ISBN 978-1-56947-222-4
  
  ### Plays
  
  * The Wideawakes, Aldwych Theatre, 1965
  * The Space is Mine (100 minutes)
  * Self Service (40 minutes)
  
  ## Filmography
  
  * Irene Coates on Seeing
  