Phillip Zarrilli

Phillip Zarrilli – Kalarippayattu weapons training, CVN Kalari, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala

On 9^th March 2020 when Phillip received the news from his oncologist that the cancer he had been living with for fourteen years had begun to ‘seriously party’ (his words) he said to me ‘this is our last adventure together.’

I have been so fortunate, having this great mind, this gentle and generous man as my companion in so many ways – loving, working, living, travelling, thinking, writing and making performance alongside him for twenty one years, with and without The Llanarth Group. The journey may continue, but now it is in parallel, perhaps, not our accustomed hip-to-hip together.

Phillip died on 28^th April 2020 at 13.52 UK time. He rode out on a breath – like so many times in his teaching he spoke of riding the breath to that moment of completion at the end of exhalation – the space in-between at the end of one cycle before the impulse of the next inhalation begins. This time came no inhalation.

It was the ‘good death’ he wanted, I think – calm, pain-free, unsentimental – me holding his hand.

I keep thinking of the Tagore line: ‘Let it not be a death, but completeness.’

There is a fullness to Phillip’s last months and year: the trip to Kerala in January 2020 and all that happened there:

Phillip Zarrilli and Jo Shapland performing ‘Told by the Wind’, The Llanarth Group. Photo: Kaite O’Reilly

Performing Told by the Wind at the Kerala international festival, giving talks, workshops and teaching at Calicot University, seeing Kathakali with Rustom Bharucha and meeting again with his Indian family –visiting the significant people and places, too many to name in full here, but including Sathyan (G Sathyanarayanan) and family at CVN Kalari in Thiruvananthapuram, Phillip’s ‘brother’ Kunju Vasudevan and family, and an extraordinary Koodiyattam performance at the temple in Killimangalam, visiting his friend and former Kathakali teacher MPS (M.P.Sankaran Namboodiri) and family, to name just a few. He said that he felt all that happened that month was a full circle turning, a completion, and he was full of gratitude. We sensed this would be his last trip to Kerala, and were so grateful to be able to go, to have him so visible, connecting, being honoured by those who were so important in his work and life.

Phillip Zarrilli being honoured by Sathyanarayanan G at CVN Kalari in Thiruvananthapuram, January 2020

 

Five days after our return to the UK in February we began our final collaboration, co-directing the 5 star reviewed The Beauty Parade at Wales Millennium Centre – delighting in a sense of having possibly fulfilled what we could achieve together, a synthesis.

Phillip Zarrilli and Kaite O’Reilly in rehearsals ‘The Beauty Parade’, Wales Millennium Centre, February 2020. Photo courtesy of WMC

2019 had been a significant and prolific year, full of achievement and creativity. October 2019 brought the publication of his last, great book (Toward) A Phenomenology of Acting (Routledge), which launched at ITI (Intercultural Theatre Institute) in Singapore.

Phillip Zarrilli at launch of his last book ‘(Toward) A Phenomenology of Acting’, ITI, Singapore, October 2019

His scholarship continued, and there are various essays forthcoming, including a chapter on his lifelong engagement with traditional Asian disciplines of body-mind training in Generating Knowledge Through Interweaving (working title) for the International Research Centre: Interweaving Performance Cultures, Berlin, where we were both fellows for many happy and stimulating years, with wonderful colleagues. Our collaborative essay An Irreverent richard iii redux: Re-Cripping the Crip is published later this month in Playfulness in Shakespearean Adaptations (Routledge). Phillip was writing increasingly for performance and we relished the subversive crip’ playfulness of our co-written script richard iii redux [or] Sara Beer is not Richard III which Phillip directed, produced and also performed in, shortlisted for the International James Tait Black Prize for innovation in drama, August 2019, and published in my collected The ‘d’ Monologues.

2019 was a rich year for directing. His production of Lie With Me with the graduating cohort of Intercultural Theatre Institute [formerly TTRP] in Singapore completed that long relationship with Sasi (T. Sasitharan) and Beto (Alberto Ruis Lopez) and ITI.

‘Lie With Me’ company, ITI 2019 cohort, Theatres in the Bay, Singapore

He had just begun work on Carri Munn’s No.74, and earlier in the year directed Cosy, my play about end of life, with long-term collaborators Gaitkrash for Cork Midsummer Festival. Phillip was always keen to encourage audiences to talk about death and to have agency in how they would like their lives to end – but not to stop living until the very end.

Kaite O’Reilly, Phillip Zarrilli and Seamus O’Mahoney discussing end of life scenarios, Cork Midsummer Festival June 2019

Phillip lived with cancer – creatively, fully and without complaint – for fourteen years. He always spoke of how grateful he was to have been able to teach, create, perform, direct and, most importantly, complete his books, constantly giving thanks to the brilliant skills and ideology of universal free healthcare offered by the UK’s NHS (National Health System). We are both hugely grateful to Hospiscare in Exeter, UK, who gave Phillip such tender and expert palliative care, and in the most challenging of conditions, in the middle of a pandemic. Against all the odds, they allowed me to be with Phillip, showing such compassion.

Owing to Covid19 there will be no funeral, but we hope that when we are able to travel and gather again, we all will find opportunities to celebrate Phillip and our relationship with him, to tell our stories and sing the old songs, all across the world. He is much beloved, and he also loved – his son Barth and daughter Samara, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren – and he cared deeply for his many  decades-long friends and collaborators, valuing the wealth of students, actors, and scholars he shared his time, skills, and thoughts with, and who enriched his existence.

I believe Phillip inhabited every second of his life until he departed, soaring, on a breath.

Spies in our skies: the making of The Beauty Parade

Anne-Marie Piazza and Georgina White in ‘The Beauty Parade.’

The Beauty Parade, secret moon squadron, has finally landed, opening at Wales Millennium Centre to full houses and (I am so happy to say) emotional and enthusiastic audiences. I hope to write a full blog post about the process and reactions once I’ve caught my breath – so until then, here’s the programme notes  and an interview in The Guardian newspaper….

 

Kaite O’Reilly
Writer / Concept / Co-Director

“I first heard of ‘The Beauty Parade’ more than twenty years ago, when interviewing former Second World War Codebreaker Molly Schuesselle, who became a close friend. Molly worked with a pilot who dropped hastily trained British female agents behind enemy lines into occupied France between 1941-44 – codename ‘The Beauty Parade.’ Molly kept this information to herself for fifty years, having signed the Official Secrets Act. I was the first person she spoke to in depth about this.

For decades I have wanted to explore the stories of the ‘ordinary women’, nameless in war, who fell between the cracks, who perhaps did not return: women whose exploits even now languish in classified files owing to the clandestine nature of their war work.

An opportunity came thanks to the Arts Council of Wales who gave me a Creative Wales Major Award to experiment with form. Building on my thirty years of working with Deaf theatre practitioners, I set out to explore the creative potential of interweaving spoken, sung, projected, musical and visual languages into a performance, working with long term collaborators Sophie Stone and composer Rebecca Applin. Our process was unusual. I would write the material, select some for Sophie to transform into visual language, we would meet, polish the visual material, video it, then share with Becky, who composed following the tempo-rhythms of Sophie’s visual language. The process and outcome are unusual: the music follows the performer, and not the more usual way around.

I am immensely grateful to Wales Millennium Centre and our producer, Emma Evans, who understood the potential of this project, and who, despite my dogged insistence on the unusual process, still gave us a home.”

Graeme Farrow
Artistic Director, Wales Millennium Centre

Artistic director Graeme Farrow outside Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay

The Beauty Parade tells the stories of incredible women who played a vital, dangerous yet secret role in the Second World War. It’s a privilege to uncover these histories and to honour the invisible women who have, until now, been removed from history.

It has been a delight to co-produce this piece with ground-breaking theatre-maker Kaite O’Reilly. As an artist who has pioneered inclusive practice, her knowledge, experience and flair were integral for bringing these stories to life. She creates work that is thought provoking, creative and accessible.

Together with Kaite, we have explored new and innovative ways of working, and it has been hugely exciting to make work with visual language, music and text. The result is a multi-layered piece, that we hope will be seen and enjoyed by a wide audience.

With this co-production we continue our work that celebrates the voice in all its forms, and the responsibility we have to give a voice to those who have been forgotten or erased from history. We’re delighted to be celebrating these incredible women. It’s a thrill and a great responsibility to play our part in telling one of the most extraordinary stories of the 20th century.

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Spies in the skies: the extraordinary story of The Beauty Parade

Sophie Stone stars in Kaite O’Reilly’s show which celebrates the forgotten women of the second world war with a powerful visual language.

Gareth Llŷr Evans interviews the performer/visual language expert Sophie Stone and the writer, lyricist and co-director Kaite O’Reilly for The Guardian.

Different languages echo, augment and collide … Anne-Marie Piazza, Sophie Stone and Kaite O’Reilly during rehearsals for The Beauty Parade. Photograph: Rhys Cozens

 

Sophie Stone extends her right arm and lets her hand float downwards while moving her fore and middle fingers back and forth. With this gesture, the actor transports us from a lunchtime bar at the Wales Millennium Centre to a moonlit night in occupied France, where women parachute through the sky.

These are the women of The Beauty Parade, written and co-directed by Kaite O’Reilly. The title comes from a codename for a project established by the Special Operations Executive during the second world war. Fluent French-speaking women from England and Wales were recruited and trained as spies and saboteurs, before being flown across the Channel to join the resistance.

Based on O’Reilly’s text and lyrics, Sophie Stone has created a visual language to be performed as part of the work. Describing her process, Stone says: “It’s taking from a language anything that is visually iconic, and can be understood by either deaf or hearing audiences, then morphing it into a different image, led by an emotional context.” Images of war become tactile, modulated by gravity, speed and intensity. But this is not mere translation; it is deaf-led.

Stone identifies as Deaf with a capital D, which asserts deafness as a culture – rich with its own history, arts, languages and organisations – as opposed to solely the audiological condition, marginalised by a hearing world. “It’s not that I can’t hear,” she says. “I don’t hear. It’s self-empowering. It’s important to say.” She would film her sequences – a combination of elements of British Sign Language, with signed poetry and hand shapes – which were then used by composer Rebecca Applin for the show’s music and songs.

“I love the fact that you Google ‘beauty parade’ and you just get all these women in swimming costumes lining up,” O’Reilly says. But the show’s title also hints at a darker irony. These were women who had to use “their homespun beauty, appearing like the girl next door, to slip beneath the radar of surveillance”. These were extraordinary but ultimately invisible performances, undertaken in extraordinary circumstances.

It is, O’Reilly continues, a mostly forgotten history. “Because they were already using aliases, using their noms de guerre, these women fell between the cracks. Because they were often treated as criminals, they weren’t given POW status.” The war came to an end, and these women simply disappeared.

O’Reilly’s text allows for these stories to take centre stage. As a leading figure in disability arts and culture in the UK, foregrounding often marginalised bodies and voices is central to her work. Acclaimed for her writing specifically for deaf and disabled performers, her work invites audiences to interrogate our preconceptions of the centre and the periphery. The Beauty Parade is the first time that music has been central in the development of one of her plays.

On stage, Stone’s visual language, performed alongside actor-musicians Georgina White and Anne-Marie Piazza, is interwoven with O’Reilly’s text and Applin’s music. Sometimes these different languages echo and augment each other; sometimes they collide. But the effect, even when glimpsed early in their rehearsal period, feels viscerally theatrical. By necessity, according to the specific needs of the three performers, they breathe as one: setting the pace, shaping its rhythms and guiding each other.

In our separate conversations, both O’Reilly and Stone playfully suggest that the recent increased visibility of deaf and disabled stage performers was due to it being “fashionable”. But now, as a result of what might have initially been tick-box exercises, it is starting to bear real change. It is an exciting time, particularly for deaf actors, who are empowered beyond doing “lovely things with their hands,” as Stone jokes. “From being let into a room, people have realised that we’re worth so much more than that. It’s more than just fashion. It’s more than just box-ticking. We actually have something that makes the work richer.”

Stretching across the lobby of the Millennium Centre hangs a banner advertising the production, which the venue is co-producing. It features all three performers, standing to attention, dressed in period costume. They stare directly into the camera. The image is also prominently displayed outside the venue, next to posters for forthcoming megamusical tour stops. The Beauty Parade affirms its presence – it’s as equally mainstream as any of these offerings. Invisible women no longer, demanding that we meet their gaze. “This is the first time I’ve been put on a poster,” says Stone. “It’s the first time I’ve been advertised in a way that is commercial and as a character. And I look as equal as everyone else on that poster.”

• The Beauty Parade is at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 5-14 March.

The Beauty Parade – interviews and features 7-14 Feb

Anne-Marie Piazza’s poster as Lillian in The Beauty Parade WMC

Now at the end of the second week of rehearsals for The Beauty Parade at Wales Millennium Centre, we’re excited at how all the different elements of this complex project seem to be coming together beautifully.

Much of the last week has been developing the visual language sequences, Sophie and I working with Jean St Clair and Duffy (Brian Duffy). It is always a privilege to be in a rehearsal room with such fantastic experts in ‘V V’- the Visual Vernacular… I find Sophie’s visual language sequences visceral and deeply moving, especially when combined with Becky Applin’s evocative musical composition. This project began as part of my Creative Wales Major Award from Arts Council Wales – ‘the performative power of words with music’ – so I’m relishing the unexpected emotional kick that comes with the combination of visual, sung, spoken and musical languages.

Sophie Stone in rehearsal in The Beauty Parade. Photo: Kaite O’Reilly

I’ve been impressed by the skills of our actor-musician-singers Georgina White and Anne-Marie Piazza. Apart from delivering lines with aplomb, they seem completely unfazed by the breadth of styles Becky has composed in – from Second World War Swing a la The Andrews Sisters, through Torch songs to a cappella. I’m looking forward immensely to next week, when we begin to do run-throughs and combine the design team’s contributions with what we’ve been doing.

It’s also immensely gratifying to find that a subject which has been my obsession for so many years also seems to be capturing the imagination of others. Ticket sales are going well, and there’s been a lot of media interest, with a fantastic feature and interview earlier this week, below.

Information about the production can be seen in my previous post, or here. I’ll be writing further blogs ab0ut our process and collaborators as we draw closer to opening in almost three weeks time….

Meanwhile, here’s a feature in South Wales Life  and a hugely enjoyable interview I had with Nathan and Wayne of Wayne and Wyburn on Radio Cardiff.

The Beauty Parade

The Beauty Parade, WMC, 5-14 March 2020

Hugely excited to begin rehearsals next week for my co-production with Wales Millennium Centre: The Beauty Parade. Below, details and the trailers. I’ll be blogging about the process during the next few weeks.

“We are the secret moon squadrons. Dropped by moonlight to set Europe ablaze.”

It’s the 1940s, deep in wartime, men are fighting on the front line and women don’t engage in armed combat; they keep the fires burning, the factories going, and the children fed at home. Or so we were told…

Pioneering theatre-maker Kaite O’Reilly collaborates with composer Rebecca Applin and performer/visual language expert Sophie Stone to expose one of the most unique operations of the Second World War; whereby ordinary women were plucked from obscurity and parachuted behind enemy lines.

These falling women, spiralling through the dark became saboteurs and silent killers. Sent to spy, to eavesdrop, to encourage the spilling of secrets.

The project’s code name? The Beauty Parade.

A unique collaboration between Deaf and hearing artists, The Beauty Parade is captioned throughout and incorporates live music, evocative songs and visual language to tell one of the most extraordinary stories of the 20th century.

Further information and tickets here

Trailer on Youtube: https://youtu.be/iSL-InGyaVc

We also have the magnificent Sophie Stone presenting a synopsis in BSL in the following trailer: https://youtu.be/qN0-au3qwGw

The Writer’s Compass: inclusivity, diversity, innovation

The Beauty Parade. Wales Millennium Centre 5-14 March 2020

A Christmas bauble of Sophie Stone, Georgina White and Anne-Marie Piazza in a seasonal image of my next production, The Beauty Parade. Opening at Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) in March 2020, I’m currently completing the book and lyrics for this performance, working with composer Rebecca Applin and co-director Phillip Zarrilli:

“We are the secret moon squadrons. Dropped by moonlight to set Europe ablaze.”

It’s the 1940s, deep in wartime, men are fighting on the front line and women don’t engage in armed combat; they keep the fires burning, the factories going, and the children fed at home. Or so we were told…

The Beauty Parade has been a project a long time coming… It was inspired by a story told to me by my ‘adopted Grandma’ Molly Schuessele in the early 1990’s, about ordinary women recruited, trained as agents and then dropped by parachute behind enemy lines into occupied France 1941-44. I began exploring both the theme and the form in my 2017/18 Creative Wales Major Award: The performative power of words with music, before being commissioned to bring it to fruition by WMC. A collaboration between Deaf and hearing artists, it exemplifies the innovation in form and aesthetic I have been speaking about recently, at Simbiotic Festival (Barcelona) and for the British Council / Acesso Cultura in Lisbon earlier this week.

Barcelona and the Portugese event featured interactions with directors, programmers and artists, where I argued that so-called ‘access tools’ should be put at the heart of the creative process – ‘the aesthetics of access’. Rather than being an ‘add-on’ for ‘the disabled’ or ‘the Deaf’, I argue that creatively incorporating audio description, captioning, sign or visual languages into our performances from the outset develops the form and leads to innovative, exciting work.

It is immensely gratifying to have interest in inclusivity and work led by disabled and Deaf artists. For decades I and many others have been banging on doors, proselytising about the necessity of diversity not just in bodies on stage, but the stories told, by whom, and how. Working with fabulous composer Rebecca Applin and performer/visual language expert Sophie Stone has been a phenomenal experience, interweaving Deaf and hearing performance cultures into a hybrid, a ‘third way’….

After a short r&d next week, our rehearsals start with the full cast and company in Cardiff at WMC in February 2020. Along with writing the book and lyrics, I’m also co-directing with Phillip Zarrilli and co-producing with Emma Evans of WMC. Tickets are on sale now and further information about the production is available here.

 

This writing life: Summer 2019

My mother always said that life offered a feast or a famine and never a steady balanced three meals a day which might keep our blood sugar and nerves steady. No, it was a juddering, shuddering rollercoaster ride, swinging from gluttony to a wafer and water diet, and I should always be ready for either.

This year so far has certainly been of a generous rather than miserly disposition. I’ve been immensely fortunate with productions and commissions in 2019/20 and pause now, just post-midsummer, with my head spinning and my belly fit to burst. This, I promise you, is not gloating – the famine months will be upon me again soon enough, and I know from past experience what bolsters me through those lean times is the memory of small celebrations when things were bowling along famously, thank you very much. Success and steady employment is scarce enough in this business, so should be celebrated when it dallies in the neighbourhood. But as my friend Chris reminds me, it isn’t entirely luck when things go well, but a reaping of the benefits of work we seeded long ago. And so like the cricket in the fable, I am singing in the sunshine, but also trying to be the ant and prepare for the future.

Aesop’s Fables, Unicorn theatre.

Fables have been very much a companion the past few months as my first small commission for Unicorn Theatre goes into production. “Working in theatre with young audiences is a total privilege and helps make you a better artist” Aesop’s Fables directors Justin Audibert and Rachel Bagshaw said in a recent interview and I totally agree.

My writing commissions when I was starting out were for young audiences, and the first thing I think about when approaching a new script is considering who will be experiencing the event I hope to create. It directs the story, tone, aesthetic and theatre style. After huge state of the nation plays about death, difference, diversity and disability, it was hugely enjoyable to return to thinking about a young audience, and how to select and make current one of Aesop’s Fables for The Unicorn Theatre’s summer production.

Jessica Hayles and Guy Rhys in ‘Dog and Wolf’ by Kaite O’Reilly, Unicorn Theatre. Photo: Craig Sugden

I chose ‘Dog and Wolf’, a little known fable from Aesop’s trove, as I needed to find something that could have resonance for contemporary times and one that could be political (as in the personal is political) rather than archaic or moralistic. Aesop is often associated with ‘the moral of the story is…’ but there’s no moral here, it’s a teaching, which is just as well, as I abhor moralising. I think it’s better to engage through raising curiosity or empathy rather than through the flawed binary of right or wrong. This pithy fable explores quite complex relationships and issues – of ‘ownership’, hierarchy, freedom, and work/life ethics and fitted my politics of preferring to be hungry and free than well fed but not owning yourself.

I hasten to say, my looping, punning, tongue-twistery treatment of the fable may indeed verge on the post-dramatic, but it’s not as worthy as my hand-wringing description, above, suggests. Co-directed by both Justin and Rachel, it appears in the repertoire for both age groups, 4-8 year old and 8-11 years, and runs until August.

I’ve been thinking a lot about perseverance and longevity in career of late. It’s largely due to mentoring two brilliant but vastly different creatives, Gemma Prangle and Lisette Auton. The conversations we’ve had are as instructive for me as them. We’ve been thinking about trying new processes and form, discovering voice and tone while trying to beat that old bug bear, imposter syndrome. Both women are phenomenally talented and forging ahead with new practice and projects. It’s an immense privilege to be going part of the journey with them, reminding them that no, there is no one way to do anything, and part of their task is finding what works for them, and to hell with all the advice and theories about how to… I’m sure I’m not the only one who wasted an inordinately long time worrying that my process wasn’t like what the manuals or the best-selling authors or the Oscar winning screenwriters said was needed to succeed and get ahead.

‘Just do it’, I said during an impromptu lecture with members from Youth Theatres of Ireland who attended a performance of my play Cosy at Cork Midsummer Festival. It’s not the first time I’ve been photographed outside a theatre with a large percentage of the audience, nor will it be the last time I’m suddenly press-ganged into an impromptu Q&A. I love it. It’s refreshing and invigorating to speak with our emerging practitioners and the future generation of theatre makers. These young creatives were spectacular, full of insight and curiosity, with a strong social and political conscience. Irish theatre is going to be just fine if these are the makers of the future.

Members from the Youth Theatres of Ireland with me outside the Firkin Crane, Cork, prior to a performance of ‘Cosy’ by Gaitkrash.

Cosy at Cork Midsummer Festival was delicious, a wonderful experience of working with six female performers, playing age 16 to 76, at the top of their game. The following short video interviews can give a taste of the company, Gaitkrash, and the lively dynamic whilst dealing with the subject of death from performers Regina Crowley, Mairin Prendergast and Pauline O’Driscoll https://vimeo.com/341828036

http://https://vimeo.com/341828036

The director, Phillip Zarrilli, has his own playful riposte on the subject. https://vimeo.com/345047366

http://https://vimeo.com/345047366

July continues being female-collaborator led, with research and development on a new commission from Wales Millennium Centre, building on my 2017/18 Major Creative Wales Award from Arts Council Wales which had me exploring ‘The Performative Power of Words with Music.’

Sophie Stone and Rebecca Applin in rehearsal in Wales Millennium Centre

Working with long term collaborators composer Rebecca Applin and performer Sophie Stone is an absolute dream, and I will be opening up more about this innovative project later in the Summer.

Meanwhile also in July is the book release of ‘Persians’, winner of theTed Hughes Award for new works in poetry, published by Fair Acre Press.

We will be having a Poetry Party on 1st September at Mid Wales Arts Centre – celebrating ‘Persians’ and the publication of brilliant poet Chris Kinsey’s ‘From Rowan Ridge’, also published by Fair Acre Press. The event is free, and will feature readings from our new books, plus a host of invited poets from across Wales.

Persians’ will be published by Fair Acre Press on 29th July 2019, but advance copies can be ordered from the publisher here. It will also be available via Amazon, online, and all good bookshops from the publication date.

I also have other launch events and workshops happening in early September, with a few places left on my masterclass in adaptations at Small World Theatre, details here.

 

Launch and workshop:

I will be launching Persians in Cardigan at Small World Theatre on 7th September, following a workshop on adapting ancient texts:

Singing the old bones –  new stories from ancient texts. 

Revisiting older stories can be a masterclass in narrative. Myths, fairystories, epics from Ancient Greek drama and the oral tradition survive as they seem to speak to each age anew. These archetypal characters and narratives inspire and invite constant reinvention, yet the old bones remain true. In this practical workshop we will retell, remake and renew, participants exploring individual perspectives on timeless themes, reshaping ancient tales to illuminate something contemporary. The tutor, Kaite, is a repeat re-teller, creating to date three very different performances on the story of Blodeuwedd from The Mabinogion, and a new version of Aeschylus’s Persians,the oldest verse drama in the Western tradition, which won The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry.

We ask participants to come with a myth, fable, ancient drama or story, which we will use to explore the fundamentals of story making: theme, structure, setting, dialogue and character. Through examples of Kaite’s diverse approaches to reinventing existing texts, we will make our own, sparking a new cycle of telling and retellings, seeding work which could be developed further beyond the masterclass.

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Workshop 2-5pm on 7th September 2019, £25.

Small World Theatre | Theatr Byd Bychan
Cardigan | Aberteifi, SA43 IJY

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Booking:

sam@smallworld.org.uk
01239 615 952
smallworld.org.uk
twitter: @theatrbydbychan

Numbers are limited and already almost sold out, but plans are afoot for a further workshop/event in November 2019 at the same venue. 

After the workshop:

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Launch of ‘Persians’ Kaite O’Reilly’s new version of Aeschylus’s classic verse drama. 6pm. Free entry.

Kaite will read from the verse drama and speak about the historical and contemporary contexts of this extraordinary text. There will be a book signing after the reading and launch.

 

Wales Arts Review Pick of 2016

Theatre Curtain, courtesy Wales Arts Review

Well, it’s not quite lunar new year, so perhaps I’m not SO late in coming to Wales Arts Review’s Pick of 2016…

Delighted to see my Unlimited commission, ‘Cosy’, produced by The Llanarth Group in association with Wales Millennium Centre and directed by Phillip Zarrilli with a cast of sterling Welsh female performers has made the ‘pick of the year’ in three categories:

Best of Welsh theatre 2016:

http://www.walesartsreview.org/welsh-theatre-the-best-of-2016/

Best articles of 2016 with my authored feature COSY: the Genesis of a play:

http://www.walesartsreview.org/cosy-the-genesis-of-a-play/

Thirdly, best reviews, with Gary Raymond’s insightful analysis:

http://www.walesartsreview.org/24446/

All the selections are well worth reading. This retrospective overview of cultural activity in Wales in 2016 reveals how rich, how innovative, how exciting and how vibrant the work, across all art forms and media, is. I’m proud to be amongst the number.

Thanks to Wales Arts Review.

Cosying up to the critics….

And so I find myself in Berlin, continuing my fellowship at the remarkable International Research Centre ‘Interweaving Performance Cultures’, Freie Universitat, and preparing to set off to the German language premiere of one of my plays at Mainfranken Theater Wurzburg. I will write about my research work in a future blog, along with the German language premiere of The Almond and the Seahorse – translated by Frank Heibert as Mandel und Seepferdchen. Before I move on to this German adventure, I feel I have to complete the circle with my previous production, Cosy, The Llanarth Group in association with the Wales Millennium Centre, supported by Unlimited.

It is one month since that play premiered, and I have only really absorbed the astonishing critical response to the production, directed by Phillip Zarrilli, with a wealth of Welsh women performers: Sara Beer, Llinos Daniel, Bethan Rose Young, Ri Richards, Sharon Morgan and Ruth Lloyd.

Sara Beer as Maureen in ‘Cosy’. Photo: Farrows Creative

I have been collecting the reviews and responses, and excerpts follow, with links to the full reviews:

Brief extracts from reviews of COSY by Kaite O’Reilly  

8-12 March, 2016 Wales Millennium Centre

‘COSY: It will make your heart pump and your belly shake.’  

         Denis Lennon Art Scene in Wales (March 11, 2016) http://www.asiw.co.uk/reviews/cosy-wales-millennium-centre

‘When the lights go up at the end of Kaite O Reilly’s Cosy in the WMC’s Weston Studio, you might find that you have to pick yourself up off the floor and put an ice pack on your face for the clobber it gives you. This play fights you and your natural urge to ignore the inevitable; it provokes and can reduce you to tears like any great fighter. And it does so, as O’Reilly does so well, through language…This production stirs and questions our ideals of life and death in a beautiful and sensitive manner. It will make your heart pump and your belly shake. A thought-provoking night that is not to be missed.’

 

New Welsh Review Issue 110 (Winter 2016)

‘Cosy’ by Kaite O’Reilly at WMC 

Sophie Baggott  https://www.newwelshreview.com/article.php?id=1169

…‘Cosy’ is simultaneously the most moving and entertaining script I’ve heard on a Welsh stage in years…The all-female cast members are each phenomenally in tune with their characters… O’Reilly’s writing is, at times, breathlessly beautiful. Without warning, bickering is wrenched into raw, soul-searching outbursts… [O]ne might…have been aghast at the deafening decibels of laughter spilling out of Weston Studio throughout the performance. Yet, rather than cloaking ‘Cosy’ in gloom, O’Reilly’s play beams with black comedy. The sisters are wickedly funny in this cross-wired mess of a situation. The playwright displays a quite perfect clip of how families so often muddle their way through the most maze-like dramas with a ‘well, you have to laugh’ mentality.

Sharon Morgan in ‘Cosy’. Photo: Farrows Creative

The Arts Desk, 4 stars

Powerful disquisition on ageing, death and womanhood

 Gary Raymond 10 March 2016 The Arts Desk **** http://www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/cosy-wales-millennium-centre

‘Kaite O’Reilly’s new play is a dark dark comedy, a Chekhovian family saga on a mainly bare stage that handles its subjects of aging, death and family with a rich and grounded intellectualism to be expected of the playwright’s work. The production itself skips lightly along the thin line that separates reality from a discomforting dreamscape, the waiting room: everyone is waiting, for death, for life, for family members to arrive. It is an ominous comedy…

Sharon Morgan is regal as Rose; Ri Richards, Ruth Lloyd and Llinos Daniel are excellent as the sisters; Bethan Rose Young has perhaps the most difficult task as the precocious 16-year-old who seems to learn nothing in school other than enlightenment philosophy; but it is Sara Beer who steals the show as Maureen, a brilliant and disconcerting comic turn that from the off envelops the play in a sense of the otherworldly.’

Western Mail/Wales Online

Cosy tackles the difficult subject of suicide with comic timing and emotional depth

Jafar Iqbal 10 March 2016 http://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/theatre-news/cosy-tackles-difficult-subject-suicide-11020164

‘Good things happen when Kaite O’Reilly comes to Cardiff. Previous visits have resulted in critically acclaimed productions showcased by the likes of Sherman Cymru and National Theatre Wales…For what is arguably her most intimate production to date, O’Reilly may also have produced her best…Cosy is a tender meditation on the value of life…What immediately stands out when watching Cosy is its honesty. O’Reilly tackles an extremely sensitive subject with a matter-of-factness that is, at times, shocking. Suicide is discussed frankly, without prejudice and, crucially, with laugh-out-loud humour, giving it a legitimacy that is both liberating and unnerving at the same time…six exceptional performances. The characters are all beautifully developed, the natural chemistry between them all making for great viewing. Standing out from the pack is Sharon Morgan, as Rose… As the play reaches its powerful conclusion, the audience is gripped. Comedies about suicide aren’t made too often but, in writing a very good one, Kaite O’Reilly proves yet again why she is amongst Britain’s best playwrights. And someone welcome back to Cardiff any time.’

Llinos Daniel (Gloria), Ri Richards (Ed), Sharon Morgan (Rose), Ruth Lloyd (Camille) and Bethan Rose Young (Isabella) in ‘Cosy’. Photo: Farrows Creative

 

The Stage. 4 stars.

Cosy review at Wales Millennium Centre – ‘deliberately discomforting confrontation with death’

Rosemary Waugh. **** https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/2016/cosy/

‘“Well, doesn’t this look cosy?” says Gloria (Llinos Daniel) as she lets herself into her mother’s living room. Yet, despite the title, there is nothing cosy about Kaite O’Reilly’s new play. Instead, all aspects sit incongruously with one another, from the self-consciously fashionable clothes warn by middle-aged Camille (Ruth Lloyd), to the clunky, prep school philosophy phrasing spouted by granddaughter Isabella (Bethan Rose Young) and, most of all, the different family members forced together.

This conscious discomfort continues into Simon Banham’s set design, which starts life as nondescript, dust-sheeted mounds, before morphing into blood-red lines of nursing home chairs that slice the space into disjointed angles. Lighting by Ace McCarron brings the medicinal into the domestic setting, turning first spearmint blue and then a saccharine peach. Gloria, the most estranged daughter, is introduced in a blaze of red, while the increasingly frequent mentions of death turn the stage black. The production’s soul is found in the musical interludes by Daniel, which act as buffer zones between the fraught familial exchanges.

Rose’s (Sharon Morgan) insistence that her family must confront the idea of death is the ultimate un-cosy element. Her more didactic ruminations are lifted by Sara Beer’s humorous, subtler comments on assisted suicide and disability…’

Bethan Rose Young, Sara Beer, Sharon Morgan in Kaite O’Reilly’s ‘Cosy’. Photo: Farrows Creative

 

Dr Mark Taubert. Ehospice.com

Author: Dr Mark Taubert, Clinical Director/Consultant in Palliative Medicine, Velindre NHS Trust, Cardiff) (http://www.ehospice.com [palliative care news])

‘Where to begin to describe this play by renowned playwright Kaite O’Reilly? I’ll start by making up a word: ‘uncosy’ came up repeatedly in my mind with an ill-at-ease feeling delivered with unremitting pace throughout this play……Sara Beer gives one of the stand-out performances in this play, with her witty, funny and astutely observed thoughts on modern medicine, life, death, attitudes towards disabled people and also assisted suicide…

‘Cosy’ dealt with the big ethical questions our society will face in future in a surprisingly balanced way. This balance is achieved by witnessing debates between people with very different opinions: they argue and argue, but this is portrayed in an informed way.

Advance care planning, advance decisions, do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation decisions (and tattoos) all get pitched in such a way that a medical professional like myself could identify with this societal critique – and not cringe, as so often happens when fiction tries to imitate medical reality. I nodded a lot during the play, mainly in recognition of what I have seen and heard in hospital, community and hospice medicine over the last 16 years…’

 

British Theatre Guide

Othniel Smith

Cosy ‘…wears its deep seriousness lightly; a tale of empowerment which leaves one deep in contemplation.’

Ruth Lloyd in ‘Cosy’. Photo: Farrows Creative

 

3^rd Act Critic

Cosy: ticking meat

Holly Joy https://3rdactcritics.wordpress.com/?s=Cosy&submit=Search

‘We are hit with a sombre set. Cosy, it says on the backdrop. Exquisitely mournful music plays, a woman’s voice breaks the air and it begins. Watching these remarkable women enact such complex and difficult subjects – ageing, euthanasia, suicide, terminal illness and sibling rivalry with sense, passion, anger and humour was sobering.’

Art Scene in Wales: Cosy – Writing for Women

The following is a feature I wrote for Art Scene In Wales about ‘Cosy’. The original article can be accessed here

The ‘Cosy’ sisters: Ri Richards, Ruth Lloyd & Llinos Daniel. Photo: Farrows Creative

I was on attachment to the National Theatre Studio in London five years ago when I got the impulse to write a play for women covering the age range from sixteen years to seventy six. It’s quite unusual to have that spread across three generations, and a prospect I relished. When I was starting out in theatre as a performer, I often heard the lament from older women of the ‘thin’ roles available to female performers once we passed the easy-on-the-eye ingénue parts. ‘Once you’ve done Lady M in the Scottish play there isn’t really anything until septuagenarian Lady Bracknell’ I can remember being told by a veteran of the old rep’ system. Once I moved off-stage into writing full time, I swore I would create big, complex, juicy parts for women to compensate for the apparently watery gruel so many talented actresses believed they were fed.

Fast forward twenty years and a rehearsal room in Grangetown filled with Welsh national treasures: Sharon Morgan, Sara Beer, Ri Richards, Llinos Daniel, Ruth Lloyd and Bethan Rose Young: three generations of one seething, complex, love-you-to-death family, matriarchs and viragos, every one.

I love writing for women – and it has been a particular delight to be working with such fine actresses. Since our first R&D back in June 2015, their comic timing, emotional intelligence and ability to play the fine details rather than the broad strokes has urged me on to polish and refine the script. In the past heaven has been defined by theatre folk as being eternally in rehearsal, and I go with this – except I’m impatient to see the product, these six women taking to the Weston Studio stage.

‘Cosy’ is a dark comedy looking at the at times difficult things that make us human: Our relationship with siblings, mothers and daughters; our relationship to our ever-changing bodies. When we’re young we can’t wait to be older, adding years to our sum – the same years often dropped from the accounting when we’re older, approaching that ‘certain age’ when vibrant women in their prime often become invisible.

Getting older is an important subject for all, regardless of gender, in this youth-loving society where, if we believed the media, sixty is the new forty and forty the new twenty-five. How we navigate becoming mature, and the inevitable last curtain lends itself to serious, poignant and comic exploration. It’s wonderful to get my playwright hands on such multi-layered and emotionally rich material, creating parts that reveal the paradoxes and flaws at the heart of likeable characters. I believe humour allows us to embrace challenging subjects, and in our rehearsals our cast seem as adept at making me laugh as bringing a lump to the throat. I hope I am holding up my side of the bargain when I said, all those years ago, I wanted to write meaty parts for this nation’s outstanding female performers.

A great compliment came during our first read-through from our youngest member of cast, Bethan Rose Young. ‘I could act in this play right through my whole career,’ she said, ‘starting now with the granddaughter, growing into playing the sisters and mother, and in fifty years playing the grandmother.’

It’s quite something, and humbling, to think a play I’ve written could accompany an actress throughout her life.

Weston Studio, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff. March 8 to 12.

Images: Farrows Creative

‘Kaite O’Reilly has always been a rule breaker.’ Exeunt magazine

What follows is an interview with Joe Turnbull for Exeunt magazine. You can read the original feature here

With thanks to Joe and Exeunt.

 

Kaite O’Reilly has always been a rule breaker. Her 2012 play, In Water I’m Weightless set a precedent by having an all Deaf and disabled cast. She’s pioneered creative access throughout her career, informed by her longstanding affinity with Deaf culture. Plays such as The 9 Fridas, subvert traditional theatrical form and aesthetic. And even when she deliberately sets out to make mainstream work she can’t reign in her recalcitrance. She describes the Almond and the Seahorse, her 2008 play which got a five-star review in the Guardian, as her ‘Trojan Horse’: “I created what seemed to be the most commercial theatre script I’d ever written. Only it’s got subversive politics in its belly.”

Her latest work Cosy, which is set to premiere at the Wales Millennium Centre on 8 March, very much falls into the latter category. It’s ostensibly a traditional family drama encompassing three generations of women, which tackles the thorny issue of end-of-life scenarios and ageing.

“I’m deliberately taking different perspectives of a family coming together. It’s familiar – the family all get together and all these discussions and events happen in the family home. But perhaps some of the content and arguments and perspectives being presented are not the ones we would usually hear”.

It turns out O’Reilly’s dissident sensibilities are in her blood. “My family were always rebels, they were always the dissenting voice that would shout up from the back”. As O’Reilly regales me with her backstory, I’m transported to the West Midlands in the 1970s.

O’Reilly’s father, an Irish migrant is holding court amidst a bustling farmer’s market. A proper working-class Irishman, his sales patter is a performance aimed at punters as he tries to flog his sheep. Back at the O’Reilly family home, get-togethers also provide a stage, and everyone is expected to deliver, whether it’s a poem, song or a story. This is the theatre of everyday life. It clearly had quite an impact on the young Kaite.

“The performative aspect that comes culturally from being working class Irish was huge. As I get older I understand how formative that was because it was always about entertaining, engaging, challenging, provoking.”

It isn’t something that they can teach at drama school, nor is it something you can read in a book. “I think that right from the get-go, if you’re going to be a playwright it’s got to be about the living words in the mouth. You know as soon as something sounds stagey. There’s something about engaging with language in the absolute moment that you have to be able to dazzle and create and engage with words.”

But her working-class Irish heritage isn’t the only aspect of her identity that has been seminal to O’Reilly’s work:

“Identifying politically and culturally as a disabled person was essential, because it changes you. It affects everything about how you perceive the world. I think that is huge as a playwright because we’re trying to – as that old hackneyed Shakespeare quote goes – ‘to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature’. Well if you are actually seeing nature and the notion of normalcy as being different from what the majority culture says, then there’s some really interesting things happening”.

O’Reilly doesn’t shirk from the label, she has always embraced it, even in her work, whether that’s using integrated casts, embedding creative access or by directly addressing disability themes. As is common for many successful disabled artists, O’Reilly finds herself at times awkwardly straddling the two worlds of mainstream and disability arts. Cosy is perhaps a sign of things to come for O’Reilly as something of a middle ground between the two. Although the play doesn’t address disability political issues directly, it was inspired by her thoughts around assisted dying which is a very important topic for the disability rights movement.

“I started to think about ageing, about end-of-life scenarios, our relationship to the medical profession and how industrialised care has become. What are the family dynamics in end-of-life scenarios? So basically, Cosy is quite a dark but sophisticated comedy looking at whether we truly own ourselves.”

O’Reilly is eager to acknowledge that her perception of language and working process as a theatre maker have been massively influenced by her work with Deaf collaborators, such as performer and director of visual language, Jean St Clair. “Seeing what language can be through the prism of Deaf culture and experience has been really important; the form, the means, the aesthetic and the possibilities were broadened as I began to learn sign language”.

“I’m notorious for my bad signing,” she tells me, wryly. “Jean teases me all the time about it. Whenever I threaten to go and learn BSL she says ‘no don’t because I actually like what you’re doing, because it makes me think differently’”.

Due to budgetary restrictions, not to mention the changes in Access to Work benefits, O’Reilly regrets that Cosy won’t be the “all-singing, all dancing, all-signing access-fest” as previous works such as In Water I’m Weightless. The play will be captioned, and they are also trialling an app which encompasses different languages and possibly audio description. In spite of the restraints and her past successes, O’Reilly is still not taking anything for granted, displaying the enthusiasm and passion of a young upstart. “Every day I wake up smiling and thankful that we’ve got this opportunity from Unlimited, it’s an incredible gift”.

Perhaps it’s fitting for these austere times that Cosy sees O’Reilly going back to basics in more ways than one. “Cosy isn’t breaking new ground in terms of form or aesthetic but I think it’s interesting that we have reached the point of maturity, where we can have a big growling play with these different perspectives all mashed up and arguing together.”

But it just wouldn’t be an O’Reilly play if it wasn’t pushing the boundaries in some way. Cosy has an integrated all-female cast of disabled and non-disabled actors with ages ranging from 16 to 76, “how gorgeous and delicious is that?” she enthuses. Even more significantly, the roles with the most power in Cosy are predominantly staffed by people who identify culturally and politically as disabled, including the director (Phillip Zarrilli) and assistant producer (Tom Wentworth) in addition to O’Reilly herself as the writer.

“I think it’s interesting that the powerbase is coming from a very open identification as disabled. Often they’re the ones who are non-disabled and the people that are being cast are disabled. I wonder if that’s a shift that has come from Unlimited and their legacy, that we’re now becoming more and more in the position of the powerbase.”

In concert with the launch of Cosy, O’Reilly also has a book entitled Atypical Plays for Atypical actors being published by Oberon Books. It will feature a selection of five plays and performance texts spanning nearly 15 years of work, each of which is informed by disability politics. Clearly, there’s no chance of this rebel being assimilated by her mainstream success.

And like all true revolutionaries, O’Reilly isn’t content being the sole dissenting voice in what can at times be a very homogenised profession. Instead she’s looking to use her profile as a vanguard for others. “There are things that I’m trying to do through my practice and engagement that I hope is going to help shift things and provide opportunities for other people as well. For me it’s very important that we have people in leadership and positions of power who are not only disabled and Deaf, but who identify culturally and politically as so.”

Cosy is on at Cardiff Millennium Centre from 8-12th March. Tickets and info here