What a week! Award nominations, reviews, publications and research and development….

It’s been quite a week…..

On Monday we learned my Unlimited international commission And Suddenly I Disappear: The Singapore/UK ‘d’ Monologues has been nominated for Best Ensemble at The Singapore Theatre Awards. This is wonderful news, particularly from a disability perspective and regarding inclusivity. Many of my collaborators from Singapore (such as the fabulous Steph, below) were emerging performers, appearing in this first ever all Deaf and disabled-led project in Singapore, directed by Phillip Zarrilli and produced by Access Path Productions. For the quality of the work to be recognised so quickly and so publicly, is a real triumph, regardless of the actual final ‘results’. Those of us who are ‘veterans’ of the UK’s disability art scene (including Sara Beer – also performing in the ensemble) have been hammering on the doors to be given access and opportunity for DECADES. Things are changing in the UK, as across the world, but it is gratifying that this international collaboration – the first of its kind in Singapore – is included in the nominees for this award. The salty old crip’ cynic in me would say award nominees are usually non-disabled actors ‘cripping up’ to play a disabled character. It’s satisfying that for once Deaf and disabled actors are being nominated for playing a variety of ensemble characters (and not a Tiny Tim in sight).

Stephanie Fam performing in Kaite O’Reilly’s international Unlimited commission ‘And Suddenly I Disappear… the Singapore ‘d’ Monologues. Sophie Stone in background.

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The week proceeded with a terrific review of my forthcoming publication –  Persians – with Fair Acre Press. National Theatre Wales originally commissioned this new version of Aeschylus’s masterpiece – the oldest extant verse drama in the Western theatrical canon – for Mike Pearson’s site-specific performance on MOD land. The verse drama will be released later in the Summer, and I can’t wait to reveal the glorious cover, featuring several of the performers from the original production, in a special blog later this month. Meanwhile for the curious, a thumbnail of the cover is included in Liz Jones’s New Welsh Review critique of the text, reworked as poetry for publication, here.

Most of the week was spent in Cork, in an r&d with Gaitkrash. I’m not allowed to say too much at present, and apologies for being enigmatic…

I returned back to Wales in the early hours of this morning, reading further positive comments about Taking Flight Theatre Company’s production of my play peeling, which is currently touring. It’s in Manchester tonight, and other dates in Wales and Oxford over the next few weeks, finishing this leg of the tour on May 4th in Cardiff. Both The Stage and The Guardian gave the production (directed by Elise Davison) sparkling four stars reviews. Details of the tour can be found here.

The cast of Taking Flight Theatre Company’s production of Kaite O’Reilly’s ‘peeling’. Photo: Janire Najera/Raquel Garcia

Finally, this morning I woke to a review of my collected monologues The ‘d’ Monologues in Wales Arts Review. Reviewer Tomos Morris and I met last month  over a cup of green tea for an interview for The Cardiff Review, out later this month. I’m delighted Tom’s extensive research has been put to good use in his critique, which you can read here.

Meanwhile, the fire is burning, the bottle of wine uncorked and a few hours of relaxation beckons….

 

DaDaFest International 2018 and call for artistic uprisings

In celebration of international disability day on December 3rd 2018, I and various guests will be reading from my latest collection The d Monologues at DaDaFest International Festival. This is a particularly meaningful event for me. Apart from being one of the patrons of this brilliant organisation, I am thrilled to be having the English launch of the book on this auspicious day.

The monologues are fictional, but inspired by over one hundred interviews and conversations with disabled and D/deaf individuals across the world over the past decade. The publication includes the Singapore/UK dialogue of difference and diversity And Suddenly I Disappear, an Unlimited International Commission which premiered on both sides of the world earlier this year.

For years I’ve been inspired by Eve Ensler’s ‘V’ Day, where people around the world stage “an artistic uprising” – a global movement to end violence against women. With disability hate crime on the increase, and so many of the rights disabled people successfully fought and campaigned for now being eroded, I feel our visibility needs to increase, along with our ‘voices’.

Engaging so closely with disabled and D/deaf peoples’ lived experience when writing this collection has had a major impact on me. I have tried to reflect the rich, rewarding experience of disabled lives in the monologues, the immense joie de vivre, ingenuity and fuck-you attitude which for me characterises many of my friends and collaborators. I also have not pulled any punches regarding the discrimination and prejudice so many of us face – but all laced with a liberal dose of what I call Crip’ humour.

This December third myself and various leading figures from our culture and community will join me in presenting short monologues at Unity Theatre, in Liverpool. I am hoping that this might be the first in a series of readings, where simultaneously, wherever you may be, people join in celebrating all the possibilities of human variety.

As I write in the introduction:

I’ve always dreamed of an international event challenging negative representations of difference and showcasing the very real talent which exists within our often over-looked communities. The monologue form is portable, flexible, and affordable to stage, either alone or in groups, script-in-hand with little rehearsal, or fully produced in professional contexts. I imagined a chorus of individuals and groups in cities or rural outposts, in theatres or at the kitchen table, in pubs and clubs, hospitals and community centres, schools and colleges, live or live-streamed, coming together across the world in a simultaneous celebration of diversity and what it is to be human. We already have our International Day of the Disabled Person on December 3rd… Perhaps now, with the publication of these texts, we are taking the first actions towards our own ‘d’ day…?

This is a pipe-dream, perhaps – but it is a hope. If anyone reading this would like to stage their own contribution of a ‘d’ Monologue this December 3rd – at their kitchen table or somewhere more public – please let me know – for even if we can’t yet connect or livestream, I could announce the performances happening simultaneously at the event. I already have contributions from my collaborators in Singapore… If this idea appeals, please get in touch through a comment, below, or via the contact button on my website: http://www.kaiteoreilly.com

And if you are in the Liverpool area, come along – the event is free and information and tickets can be booked here. In addition to BSL interpretation, a lipspeaker will be available.

The ‘d’ Monologues launch: 8:00pm Monday 03 December 2018

Unity Theatre,  

1 Hope Place, Liverpool, L1 9BG  

Telephone: 0151 709 4988

https://www.dadafest.co.uk/event/kaite-o-reilly-s-the-d-monologues

A project supported by Unlimited with funding from Arts Council Wales.

The d Monologues published by Oberon

It’s been quite an autumn, and the leaves are still burnishing the trees… September has been a blaze of touring, festivals, and launches. My Unlimited International Commission And Suddenly I Disappear: The Singapore/~UK ‘d’ Monologues premiered at the Southbank Centre in London prior to a whistle-stop tour taking in Leicester, Oxford, and Cardiff, garnering 4 and 5 star reviews along the way – more of which in a future blog.

The Llanarth Group brought richard iii redux to Grenzenlos Kulture Festival in Mainz, Germany, where I launched my latest publication after the performance.

The d Monologues is the culmination of ten years work, featuring solos I have written specifically for Deaf and disabled performers, varying in length from audition-size 3 minutes monologues to the 70 minute one woman show richard iii redux co-written with Phillip Zarrilli. Monologues from my recent international collaboration are included in the book: And Suddenly I Disappear, along with In Water I’m Weightless, my Cultural Olympiad production with National Theatre Wales, featuring extended, new, unperformed and previously unpublished monologues. It also has A Preface in Three Voices, written by John E McGrath, Ruth Gould and Jo Verrent. Below, an excerpt from the introduction.

For a limited time, the collection is available from the Oberon website with a 30% discount, using code DMONO30

The ‘d’ Monologues by Kaite O’Reilly.

 from The Introduction

I like to think of theatre as a place of communication and exploration, of dissent and inquiry: a place of dreaming, of solving, of challenging the present and imagining the future. It’s that communal place where we can express all the possibilities of what it is to be human – so why are the majority of representations still so limited in scope and variety, and the potential of those bodies so prescribed?

I have been angry most of my life. Identifying as a working class Irish immigrant disabled female creates a certain kind of friction, a blistering energy I’ve found best directed into creative pursuits. Some years ago, somewhere along my raging, cursing way, I encountered Gandhi’s advice about being the change you want to see, and so the project The ‘d’ Monologues was born.

These collected solos are the culmination of a decade’s work trying to instigate change through writing work specifically for D/deaf and disabled actors, ‘answering back’ to the largely negative representations of difference in our media and the Western theatrical canon.

Since the Ancient Greeks disabled characters have appeared in plays, but rarely have the writers been disabled or written from that embodied or politicised perspective. The vast majority of disabled characters in the Western theatrical canon are tropes, reinforcing limited notions of what it is to be ʻnormalʼ rather than broadening the lens and embracing all the possibilities of human variety. So prevalent is the atypical body in our stage and TV dramas, the audience(s) assume they know and understand the realities of disabled and D/deaf individuals’ lives, yet few of these narratives are informed by lived experience, and so misconceptions and ableist notions of difference, shaped by the medical and charity models of disability, are reproduced and reinforced.

I wanted to make work solely for disabled and D/deaf performers, informed by the social model of disability. Like gender, I believe that disability is a social construct, and it is the physical and attitudinal barriers which disable us, not the idiosyncrasies of our bodies.

This collection is the culmination of ten years work, with fictional monologues inspired by over 100 interviews, conversations, and interactions with D/deaf and disabled individuals internationally. It brings together new and previously unperformed texts alongside monologues from In Water I’m Weightless (National Theatre Wales/Cultural Olympiad 2012), the 70 minute one woman show richard iii redux, and the multilingual, intercultural And Suddenly I Disappear.

I’ve always loved the notion of disabled and D/deaf performers all over the world presenting with pride and political urgency performance texts which did not reduce them to parodies, metaphors, villains, or inspiration porn stars – different narratives using alternative dramaturgies, theatre languages and channels of communication. These texts did not exist, so following Gandhi’s advice, I decided to be the change I wanted to see.

To buy the collection with a 30% discount, go here and enter the discount code DMONO30 at check out. This code is available for a limited time.

‘I write disabled characters who aren’t evil, piteous, or helpless.’ Read an interview with Kaite in The Guardian Society here

 

Diversity, d/Deaf, difference, disability…. Have the ‘d’ words become dirty with overuse?

Daniel Bawthan performing in Kaite O’Reilly’s ‘And Suddenly I Disappear’. Photo by William AS Tan

‘Diversity’s just lip-service. A meaningless phrase flung around everywhere, without meaning anything.’ Or so I was told yesterday, in a discussion with a disgruntled friend, disillusioned about what’s being done to the ‘d’ word. ‘It’s become trendy, and a way to attract funding,’ he gloomily concluded. ‘I’m tired of all these people who never had any interest in the Deaf or disabled communities before, or people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, sexual or gender identities, now jumping on the bandwagon just because it’s fashionable and there’s potential funding.’

It was a serious conversation, and at times tough, but unlike my friend (a seasoned theatre maker who, like me, has a long history in disability arts), I’m not as disheartened, owing to my recent experiences. I’ve been fortunate to have been party to some excellent work, full of integrity and engagement around this particular consonant. Earlier this year I was working in both Singapore and Hong Kong with organisations and individuals who really want to challenge the lack of diversity in organisations, cultures, and positions of leadership. For me the latter is essential – the work really needs to be led by those under-represented individuals, and the power structure needs to change, as otherwise the same-old, same-old endures. This I think is what troubles my friend – work coined ‘diverse’ which may cast A.N.Other, but in reality is shallow or tokenistic, with no alternative perspectives or content.

The ‘d’ word has been central to my work these past years, and especially most recently with ‘And Suddenly I Disappear: The Singapore/UK ‘d’ Monologues’, touring the UK this September after its premiere in Singapore last May. This is work that is Deaf and disabled led, celebrating all the ‘d’s of diversity and difference.

I began working on the project which has become The ‘d’ Monologues back in 2009, with a Creative Wales Award from Arts Council Wales. I wanted to explore the form of the monologue as a means of creating work for a more diverse cast. Tired of non-disabled actors ‘cripping up’,  I set out to write solos and multiple character texts specifically for d/Deaf and disabled performers – what I later went on to call ‘atypical actors’ in my first collection with Oberon.

And Suddenly I Disappear by Kaite O’Reilly. Ramesh Meyyappan, Peter Sau, Lee Lee Lim, Grace Khoo, Sara Beer. Photo William AS Tan.

These were monologues informed and inspired by lived experience, telling stories that perhaps were not so familiar, from a d/Deaf and disability perspective – the original ‘d’ of the monologues – but as time passed and this body of work grew, so too has what the ‘d’ may stand for…. diversity and difference, yes, but how also about defiance, desirable, distracting and delectable? As I wrote for Singaporean rapper/beat-boxer Danial Bawthan in And Suddenly I Disappear: The Singapore/UK ‘d’ Monologues:

“This body…. This body is dangerous. It desires, it delights, it delivers, it dances..”

Exploring other ways of considering our bodies and what it is to be human has been at the heart of my writing for this almost decade-long project. Imagination has played a large part, but so too has anonymous questionnaires and interviews I’ve led since 2009 across the UK with disabled and d/Deaf people and recently in Singapore led by my collaborators Peter Sau and Lee Lee Lim, amongst others.  These conversations about difference have inspired and provoked the fictional monologues I’ve written – I’ve never used anyone’s story or actual words, for that seems to me like theft – but I’ve been directed by and provoked by the many perspectives and multi-voicing it has been my great privilege to be privy to.

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We premiered the fruits of this dialogue between Wales/UK and Singapore at the Gallery Theatre, National Museums Singapore in May 2018, and will bring a revised version, with largely the same DNA, but with some new monologues (and performers) to the UK in September. Singaporean collaborators Grace Khoo, Peter Sau and Natalie Lim will travel to the Unlimited Festival at London’s Southbank Centre in early September, reuniting with Ramesh Meyyappan, Sara Beer, director Phillip Zarrilli, and myself. We will then join with Macs Mackay and Garry Robson, bringing new monologues and energy into the ensemble.

 And Suddenly I Disappear: The Singapore/UK ‘d’ Monologues were always imagined to be a moveable feast – a series of contrasting monologues which could adapt and change according to the venue size, cast and situation. It’s with a heavy heart we leave some of our amazing Singapore-based collaborators behind, but they will have mediatised presences, alongside UK-based performer extraordinaire Sophie Stone.

Tickets are now available for the UK tour:

5-6 September Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room, London tickets

8 September Old Fire Station, Oxford, tickets

9 September Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester, website

11-12 September Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, tickets

And Suddenly I Disappear: The Singapore/UK ‘d’ Monologues

Video-trailer

I’m delighted that the collected ‘d’ Monologues will be published by Oberon in time for the tour. I’ll give further information about this, including various launches, readings and events, as it becomes available, but it is so exciting to think these texts will be widely available for others to use… to montage the monologues to make a full evening’s performance, to do script-in-hand readings, to use them as audition pieces, or my ideal: a sharing of monologues across the globe on the International day of the disabled person (also, please watch this space….).

‘The ‘d’ Monologues’ will also include the text to the solo performance richard iii redux, co-written with Phillip Zarrilli, originally for that diversity diva Sara Beer (pictured below in one of her personas from the show). The text deconstructs Shakespeare’s villain and challenges the cultural link since Shakespeare’s time between atypical bodies/disability and evil. We also ask wider questions about the nature of performance, representation of difference and the rewriting of history by the Bard – with lots of subversive fun along the way, exploring how Richard has been ‘cripped’ in the past.

Sara Beer in ‘richard iii redux’ Panopticphorography

You can access the fantastic reviews here and potentially catch the show if you are in Mainz, Germany, in September.  We’re delighted that richard III redux heads to Mainz for a performance on 20 September, 2018 as part of this year’s Grenzenloskoultur Theater Festival (‘Theater without Boundaries’), Mainz Kleines Stadt Theater, Germany.

We hope to have the production back on the road in 2019, but until then, here’s the delight of Sara Beer in the richard III redux TRAILER.

As to the issues of ‘diversity’ and whether the ideal is being tarnished from casual over-use…. As a playwright all I can do is keep on exploring what it is to be human, and to question our hierarchies, our power dynamics, and the (mis)representations that can become common currency. Artists and theatre makers identifying as Deaf and/or disabled are presenting work on an unforeseen scale (thanks also to initiatives like Unlimited and DaDaFest) and I can only applaud and encourage this, chivvying on the so-called ‘under-represented’ to be the makers and the directors and the leaders of the future. Whether the word becomes undervalued or not, true diversity will arrive with an expansion in the identities, experiences, politics, ethnicities and bodies of those holding the reins – and perhaps the work of those currently in control is to move aside a little, or learn to power-share.

 

Atypical Plays for Atypical Actors: Selected Plays by Kaite O’Reilly

I’m delighted to make this pre-publication announcement: Oberon books will publish five of my plays and performance texts to coincide with the World premiere of Cosy at the Wales Millennium Centre in March 2016.

The news is so fresh, we haven’t yet settled on the image for the cover. I’ve been liaising with my agents and editor at Oberon about what production photographs to use after drawing up a shortlist by the fantastically talented Toby Farrow and Patrick Baldwin, who documented In Water I’m Weightless (National Theatre Wales) and peeling (Graeae Theatre Company) respectively. Mock-ups of the front and back covers will be made early in the New Year, with publicity bling thanks to Lyn Gardner, theatre critic for The Guardian. My long-term collaborator John McGrath, out-going artistic director of National Theatre Wales and in-coming director of the Manchester International Festival, will write the preface.

What follows is from Oberon books website

Atypical Plays For Atypical Actors is the first of its kind: a collection of dramas which redefines the notion of normalcy and extends the range of what it is to be human. From monologues, to performance texts, to realist plays, these involving and subversive pieces explore disability as a portal to new experience.

Includes the plays: peeling, The Almond and the Seahorse, In Water I’m Weightless, the 9 Fridas and Cosy.

Although disabled characters appear often in plays within the Western theatrical tradition, seldom have the writers been disabled or Deaf themselves, or written from those atypical embodied experiences. This is what contributes to making Kaite O’Reilly’s Selected Plays essential reading – critically acclaimed plays and performance texts written in a range of styles over twelve years, but all informed by a political and cultural disability perspective. They ‘answer back’ to the moral and medical models of disability and attempt to subvert or critique assumptions and negative representations of disabled people.

The selected plays and performance texts exhibit a broad approach to issues around disability. Some, like In Water I’m Weightless/The ‘d’ Monologues (part of the Cultural Olympiad and official festival celebrating the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics) are embedded in disability politics, aesthetics, and ‘crip’ humour. A montage of monologues that can be performed solo or as a chorus, they challenge the normative gaze and celebrate all the possibilities of human variety. The Almond and the Seahorse is different, a ‘mainstream’ character-led realist drama about survivors of Traumatic Brain Injury, with subversive politics in its belly. A response to ‘tragic but brave’ depictions of head injury and memory loss, and informed by personal experience, the play interrogates the reality of living with TBI, questioning who the ‘victims’ are.

peeling, a landmark play written for one Deaf and two disabled female actors, was originally produced by Graeae Theatre Company in 2002, 2003, and for BBC Radio 3. A ‘feminist masterpiece…quietly ground breaking’ (Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman), it has become a set text for Theatre and Drama and Disability Studies university degree courses in the UK and US. Frequently remounted, its lively meta-theatrical form supports its central themes of war, eugenics, and a woman’s control over her fertility, which are as relevant today as ever.

The performance text the 9 Fridas is a complex mosaic offering multiple representations of arguably the world’s most famous female artist, Frida Kahlo, reclaiming her as a disability icon. Performed in Mandarin translation, it was the closing production of the 2014 Taipei Art Festival and will transfer to Hong Kong in October 2016. It is currently being translated into German, Hindi, and Spanish.

Cosy is a darkly comedic look at the joys and humiliations of getting older and how we shuffle off this mortal coil. Three generations of a dysfunctional family explore their choices in a world obsessed with eternal youth, and asks whose life (or death) is it, anyway? An Unlimited Commission, Cosy will premiere and tour nationally in 2016, appearing at the Unlimited Festivals at Southbank Centre and Tramway.

The book will be published 1 March 2016 and is available for pre-orders at Oberon and Amazon

 

 

 

Have monologues, will travel. From inspiration to the Southbank. Part 1.

Karina Jones, Mat Fraser, David Toole, Nick Phillips, Sophie Stone – in Water I’m Weightless. Photo Farrows/Creative.

My production with National Theatre Wales, In Water I’m Weightless, is at the Southbank Centre, London, 31st August and 1st September as part of the official celebrations for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, an Unlimited Commission. I’m fortunate to be part of an astonishing sports and cultural Olympiad, but the genesis and ambition for this project goes far back, with roots deeper than this particular celebration. True to the spirit of this blog, I decided to trace the project’s long developmental process, to answer, as Dave Byrnes put it: ‘Well, how did I get here..?’

Some years ago I received a Creative Wales Award from the Arts Council of Wales in order to explore the solo theatrical form and also create what I called The ‘d’ Monologues. These were to be a series of monologues written specifically for Deaf and disabled performers, written from a perspective where disability is not feared, or negative, but where it is the ‘norm’. As I have written at length elsewhere, I’m often frustrated at how shallow and negative the depiction of disabled characters are in popular culture; the narratives are often (but thankfully not always) about the shock and horror of dealing with an acquired impairment/illness, or trying to be cured. I wanted to create some alternatives.

The work would not be Verbatim, nor Testamonial Theatre, but fictional monologues informed by the reality and normality of living life with an impairment. I wanted to reflect what I call crip’ humour and disability cool – a way of being in the world which is celebratory, subversive, collaborative and supportive.

I also wanted to develop my dramaturgical skills as a playwright. I have much experience in writing dialogue with a multitude of characters, but not with solo pieces. The monologue brings a whole set of dramatic problems with it, including issues of pace, dynamic, tempo-rhythm, and that central question ‘who are they talking to and why?’

I don’t believe naturalistic pieces where a character starts speaking aloud ‘to themselves’ – it reads as expositional, and it’s not naturalistic to have long conversations with yourself in full sentences, it’s stylised. I’m also not a fan of ponderous solos where a character addresses themselves reflectively in a ‘mirror,’ usually whilst removing make up, brushing hair, trimming moustaches, or straightening ties (it might be more interesting if they were doing all of the above, at once).

Direct address to the audience can be powerful and intimate (think Alan Bennett’s ‘Talking Heads’), but my personal favourites are those which are more stylised – think anything by Samuel Beckett (‘Eh Joe’, ‘Piece of Monologue’, ‘Rockaby’, ‘Not I’, etc), Bryony Lavery’s ‘Frozen’, or post-dramatic work by Crimp (parts of ‘Attempts on her life’), Kroetz (“Request Concert’), Simon Stephens (‘Pornography’), to name just a few.

My ambition was to develop myself as a dramatist, and not to follow one particular style or voice. The project began with me exploring the broad form of the solo dramatic work through practical and theoretical experimentation: reading extensively, picking apart renowned work as though it was a car engine and then piecing it together again (seriously – this is the best way to learn how a piece of respected writing works), seeing solo work, and interacting with its makers.

I decided to start with the queen of the ‘microphone and stool’ solo – Eve Ensler, creator of The Vagina Monologues. We had some email interaction, and spoke once through her office on the telephone, but we never managed to meet in person. When I was in New York she was out of town, involved with productions and organising international ‘V’ Days.

The quotation which stuck is: ‘When you bring consciousness to anything, things begin to shift.’

I spent some time in the US in 2009, observing and experiencing performance work which was either solo work, or dealing with stories of disability and impairment. Although my work would not be biographical, I saw work by Anna DeVere Smith and spoke with her about creative process, then to my great fortune shadowed Ping Chong + Company in New York.

Twenty years ago Ping Chong initiated ‘The Undesirable Elements’ series, ‘an ongoing series of community-specific interview-based theatre works examining issues of culture and identity of individuals who are outsiders within their mainstream community.’ I was fortunate to spend time with the associate director, Sara Katz, and saw several performances around the Brooklyn area, where disabled individuals performed their own stories, based on interviews which Sara had dramaturged.

The company describe the process as follows:

‘Undesirable Elements is presented as a chamber piece of story-telling; a “seated opera for the spoken word” that exists as an open framework that can be tailored to suit the needs and issues facing any community. Each production is made with a local host organization and local participants. The development process includes an extended community residency during which Ping Chong + Company artists conduct intensive interviews with potential participants and get to know the issues and concerns facing that community. These interviews form the basis of a script that weaves cast members’ individual experiences together in a chronological narrative touching on both political and personal experiences. The script is performed by the interviewees themselves, many of whom have never before spoken publicly.’    http://www.pingchong.org/undesirable-elements/

It was immensely useful to see this work, for although it was not a style or approach I wanted to follow, it gave me an example of interweaving voices. I wanted to explore choral work – how several actors could tell the one story – and I also wanted to look at interlocking individual monologues to make a whole. A great example of this in a full length work is Mark O’Rowe’s ‘Terminus’, which I saw at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2008.

After my various field trips, I started writing extensively, and in different ‘voices’ and form, supported by workshop explorations over eighteen months. In 2009/10 The ‘d’ Monologues were shown as script in hand readings at the National Theatre Studio in London, Unity Festival at Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, and Disability Pride, Cardiff Bay. Directed by Phillip Zarrilli and myself, they were performed by Macsen McKay, Sara Beer, Kay Jenkins, Rosaleen Moriarty-Simmonds and Maggie Hampton.

Cymru crips at National Theatre Studio, London.

These workshops and shared public readings allowed me to refine the texts, check the response to the work and also ‘test’ the content and form, before diverse audiences I was able to discuss the work with, after – professional (NTS), integrated (Unity), and disability culture (Pride).

Further projects included work with Julie McNamara on a one woman show I Fall to Pieces, about surviving the mental health system,  which was presented as work in progress at DaDaFest International Festival in Liverpool in 2010, and a project I aim to bring to full production in the future.

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Directed by Phillip Zarrilli, the presentation was part of my first Unlimited Commission with The Llanarth Group.

I Fall to Pieces enabled me to explore the relationship between live song and text. Julie Mc (as we call her) is a phenomenal performer and inspiring individual, whose energy, experience, and talents opened up a new vista for me as playwright and dramaturg, creating a full length one woman show. I had to struggle with changing dynamic and keeping the tempo rhythm and narrative going. In plays with more than one character, you can refresh the dynamic and lift the mood by simply having a new character enter. How to keep the pace moving, the audience engaged, and the narrative rolling can be a big challenge when making a solo piece. I relished the challenge and look forward to a time when we can fully realise this project, for we learnt from the tears and emotional response from the audience at DaDaFest, this material, combined with these collaborators, works.

A further entry on this journey from inspiration to Southbank, will follow.

For information about Unlimited, ‘a series of major commissions, the UK’s largest programme celebrating arts, culture and sport by deaf and disabled people’, please go to:

http://press.artscouncil.org.uk/Press-Releases/10-commissions-announced-for-Unlimited-the-UK-s-largest-programme-celebrating-arts-culture-and-sport-by-disabled-and-deaf-people-3e1.aspx

In Water I’m Weightless, directed by John McGrath, for National Theatre Wales, will be at The Purcell Room, Southbank Centre:

Friday 31st August 6.30pm, Saturday 1st September 2pm and 7.30pm

http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/dance-performance/tickets/in-water-im-weightless-65346

Kaite will be speaking on a panel at Southbank Centre, plus leading a writing workshop on 30th August: ttp://kaiteoreilly.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/kaite-oreilly-workshop-and-panel-discussion-at-southbank-centre-30th-august-2012/