Donna Franceschild is a British-based television writer and dramatist, originally from the US. She came to public attention as the writer of Takin' Over the Asylum, a six-part series for BBC television about a hospital radio station in a psychiatric hospital. It was first broadcast in 1994 and starred Ken Stott and David Tennant. The show won the 1995 BAFTA award for Best Serial and Best Editing, RTS Award for Best Writer, Mental Health in the Media Award and the Scottish BAFTA for Best Serial and for Best Writer. For theatre, Donna has written Quartet (Òran Mor 2006), And The Cow Jumped Over the Moon (Traverse Theatre & tour 1990) and several other plays for companies including the Tricycle Theatre and Etcetera Theatre. Recently, Donna Franceschild has been writing plays for BBC Radio 4 with Kirsty Williams producing. These plays include The Ca'Doro Cafe, an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Lost in Plain Sight and, most recently, an acclaimed adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath.

Adapted for the stage by the author, Takin' Over the Asylum is a hilarious, updated and profoundly moving adaptation of Donna Franceschild's Bafta-winning BBC TV-series. Set in a Scottish mental institution, the play reveals hope and joy in the fragile beauty of the human heart.
When Ready Eddie McKenna, Soul Survivor and double glazing salesman, arrives to reinvigorate St Jude's defunct hospital radio station he turns more than the ramshackle station upside down. The whisky drinking would-be DJ meets the 19-year-old bipolar Campbell, schizophrenic electronic genius Fergus, OCD Rosalie and the elusive self-harming Francine. Fighting against illness and perception Eddie and the patients of St Jude's strive for their dreams to be accepted.