Being Atypical at London’s Southbank Centre, 6th September 2016

 

 

I love a good chat, so am delighted to confirm I’ll be in conversation on 6th September at Southbank Centre, with the London launch of my selected plays Atypical Plays for Atypical Actors. 

The event is part of  the Unlimited Festival 6-11 September 2016: “a festival of theatre, dance, music, literature, comedy and visual arts that celebrates difference with a spirit of artistic adventure, honesty and humour.”

The selected plays, published by Oberon books, gather together many of my performance texts around difference and disability, and have been getting some lovely responses:

‘An invaluable and long over-due collection of untold stories that deserve to take centre stage.’  Lyn Gardner, Guardian

‘Kaite O’Reilly is a poet of the human condition, a singer of temporal lapses, gaps, translations, missed connections and joyful vibrancy. The performance texts collected here show depth, pain and pleasure. They squeeze the reader, asking her to feel a human touch on her own skin, in her flesh, in the nervous system: this is work that reaches out, and demands that we feel sensations in response. You will be moved.’                                           Petra Kuppers. Professor, University of Michigan, and artistic director of The Olympias

The collection includes two Unlimited Commissions: the 2012 In Water I’m Weightless, produced by National Theatre Wales and directed by John E McGrath (who also writes the foreword), and Cosy, which premiered earlier this year, directed by Phillip Zarrilli for The Llanarth Group/Wales Millennium Centre, supported by Unlimited. I’ve included some of my earlier texts, including peeling (originally produced by Graeae Theatre Company 2002/03), The Almond and the Seahorse (2008), and the 9 Fridas, after Frida Kahlo. The latter has yet to be produced in English, but I’ll be heading to Taipei and Hong Kong this autumn, when the Mandarin production for the 2014 Taipei Arts Festival is remounted for the Black Box Festival at Hong Kong Repertory Theatre.

I feel immensely lucky that I have these Autumn platforms to talk about diversity and difference. As the late, much missed Jo Cox stated in her parliamentary maiden speech thirteen months ago, we have more in common than that which divides us.

Links and further information:

http://oberonbooks.com/atypical-plays

http://unlimited.southbankcentre.co.uk/events/book-launch-kaite-oreilly-in-conversation

 

 

 

 

The 9 Fridas – Frida Kahlo in Taipei

Original illustration
for Möbius strip Theatre’s new play
+ “The 9 Fridas ( 九面芙烈達 )” Salt Tse-Ying Chiang (江則穎)
http://salt-c-art.com/The-9-Fridas

 

I’m really excited to see the publicity for my performance text ‘the 9 fridas’, to be produced by Mobius Strip Theatre Company for the 2014 Taipei international arts festival. I love the original artwork by Salt Tse-Ying Chiang, commissioned by the company for the production image, and the publicity trailer is beautiful:

http://eng.taipeifestival.org.tw/FilmContent.aspx?ID=421

This process is magical and exciting. A script I wrote, which previously only existed in my head, is now forming slowly into other manifestations, its visuals being shaped and determined by someone else’s imagination (but informed by my script) across in Taiwan.

I wrote a post some time ago about how director Phillip Zarrilli and I sat in an office in Berlin, listening in via skype to the first read-through in Taipei of the translation into Mandarin. The sense of the collaboration germinating was palpable. Now it continues to grow and evolve, taking form. The costume designs and set are taking shape and I can’t wait to get to Taipei later in the Summer to begin the rehearsals…