New Productions:
The Persians - August 2010, National Theatre of Wales
Kaite O’Reilly is delighted to be involved in the inaugural year of the National Theatre of Wales, commissioned to write a new version of Aeschylus’s ‘The Persians’ – the first play in the Western theatrical canon. Working with an outstanding creative team including director Mike Pearson, the production will be site-specific, taking place on Military of Defence land in the wilderness of the Brecon Beacons – where soldiers rehearse battle before entering the theatre of war.
Read more at the website of the National Theatre Wales here.
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By Aeschylus
In a new version by Kaite O’Reilly
Directed by Mike Pearson
Conceptual design by Mike Brookes
Designed by Simon Banham
Music by John Hardy |
Told by the Wind – January/February 2010
Created by Kaite O’Reilly, Jo Shapland, and Phillip Zarrilli
Artistic Consultants: Mari Boyd (Tokyo) and Peader Kirk (London)
PERFORMANCES OF TOLD BY THE WIND ON TOUR to BERLIN, UK, POLAND
27 March: TANZFABRIK (6p.m.): Part of Tanz Hoch Zwei
Double Feature Evening with Astrid Endruweit
Möckernstr. 68, 10965 Berlin (T. 030 7868343).
Download the e-flyer here.
www.tanzfabrik-berlin.de
11-12 October (Monday/Tuesday 8p.m.): exeter phoenix
Bradninch Place, Gandy Street, Exeter EX4 3LS, UK
T. 01392 667 080; Tickets: £9 (£7)
Download the e-flyer here.
www.exeterphoenix.org.uk
22-23 October (7p.m.): APOCALYPSIS ROOM, Grotowski Institute
Rynek-Ratusz 27, 50-101 Wroclaw POLAND
T. +48 71 34 45 320; Tickets: 20 PLN (15 students)
Download the e-flyer here.
www.grotowski-institute.art.pl
“..takes the spectator to another time and place...beautiful and powerful performances.”
Duarte da Silva. Evora Festival, Portugal.
Preview performance of TOLD, 2009.
Two figures, two lives, multiple time spaces: TOLD BY THE WIND is a new performance of movement and text that ‘dances’ an inner landscape. Inspired by East Asian and ‘post-dramatic’ aesthetics, stories are evoked and told by embodied silences, splintered interactions, and slowed down motion.
Transformative and multi-layered, TOLD is informed by Japanese Theatre of Quietude and String Theory [Quantum physics]. Intimate and meditative, it is a requiem for the unseen; a poignant duet for two figures who never physically meet.
TOLD BY THE WIND is created by an award-winning team of Wales-based artists: Kaite O’Reilly (peeling; The Almond and the Seahorse; forthcoming Persians with National Theatre Wales); performer Jo Shapland ((in)scape; forthcoming Dance for Neanderthal); and director/performer Phillip Zarrilli (The Beckett Project, Director of The Almond and the Seahorse), with lighting design by Ace McCarron.
Three established practitioners from different disciplines together explore new territory, practice, and form. Long term collaborators in a new formation, O’Reilly and Shapland collaborated on Spilt Milk (Chapter), and Shapland has trained with Zarrilli for over ten years. O’Reilly and Zarrilli worked together on the site-specific Speaking Stones with Theatre Asou (Austria and Poland), and with Sherman Cymru on the world premiere of The Almond and the Seahorse.
"Un-missable drama...Tremendous... extraordinary scenarios are tenderly drawn and powerfully realised in Phillip Zarrilli's beautifully judged production."
***** The Guardian (The Almond and the Seahorse 2008)
Peeling
by Kaite O'Reilly
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A rehearsed reading at
The Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay
Tuesday 16th June 2009, 7.30pm
as part of Unity Arts festival. |
Always the extra, never the star...Alfa, Beaty and Coral - three performers bicker, gossip. heckle and share juicy tales of sex, lies and recipes, whilst around them an epic production unfolds. The anti-heroines are gradually stripped of all pretence, their darkly comic and devastating truths uncovered.
A triumph in its initial productions by Graeae Theatre at London's Soho Theatre and Edinburgh Assembly Rooms, Peeling gives audiences a unique and compelling experience as it cunningly interweaves audio description and sign language. Presented as a rehearsed reading, with surtitles.
Cast Sara Beer, Maggie Hampton and Kay Jenkins
Directed by Kaite O'Reilly
For Informations visit
www.wmc.org.uk
Disability Arts Cymru, Sbectrwm, Bwlch Rd, Fairwater, Cardiff CF5 3EF
Tel & Textphone: 029 2055 1040
Email: post@dacymru.com
Publications
One of Kaite’s monologues has been accepted into the upcoming International Centre for Women Playwrights Mother/Daughter Monologue Book(s).
ICWP: The International Centre for Women Playwrights
www.womenplaywrights.org
Kaite was a contributor in the Disability arts and culture edition of Research in Drama Education - The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance. Her article, ‘Alternative Dramaturgies, a Playwright’s Perspective’ comments on dramaturgical innovations and developments informed by the playwright’s experience of impairment.
Volume 14, Issue 1 2009. Ed: Colette Conroy
http://www.informaworld.com
09 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Finalists Announced
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Kaite O'Reilly has been announced as one of the finalists in the international Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. The prestigious playwriting award, now entering its fourth decade, are given annually to recognize women from around the world who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre. |
The international panel of judges for the 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize awards includes Pulitzer prize winning playwright Edward Albee, noted British playwright and director Peter Gill, director and award winning playwright Emily Mann, Genista McIntosh, Executive Director of the Royal National Theatre and Sigourney Weaver.
Each year artistic directors and prominent professionals in the theatre throughout the English-speaking world are asked to submit plays. 'The Almond and the Seahorse' was nominated from both sides of the Atlantic - by Victory Gardens, Chicago, who developed the script, and Sherman Cymru, Cardiff, who mounted the first production.
For more information visit
www.blackburnprize.org.
Publications:
Phillip B Zarrilli's
Psychophysical Acting: an intercultural approach after Stanislavski
Foreword by
Eugenio Barba
interactive DVD by
Peter Hulton
Areas of focus include:
- a historical overview of a psychophysical aaproach to acting from Stanislavski to the present
- acting as an 'eneregetics' of performance applied to a wide range of playwrights: Samuel Beckett, Martin Crimp, Sarah Kane,
Kaite O'Reilly and Ota Shogo
- a system of training through yoga and Asian martial arts
- practical application of training principles
www.routledge.com/performance
News at http://www.theatre-wales.co.uk:
Kaite O'Reilly scoops major Arts Council creative wales award.
Read this article here.
News at http://www.celfcymru.org.uk:
2008 Creative Wales Award Winner's new play gets rave reviews.
Read this article here.
(from http://www.celfcymru.org.uk)
The Almond and the Seahorse
by Kaite O'Reilly (directed by Phillip Zarrilli)
"Unmissable drama...Tremendous... extraordinary scenarios are tenderly drawn and powerfully realised in Phillip Zarrilli's beautifully judged production." ***** The Guardian
“A powerful drama, beautifully written…”
The British Theatre Guide
“A fascinating work, totally engaging…”
**** Western Mail
“…Wonderful…a masterly and captivating performance…writing with such sensitive beauty and delicate understanding….what real theatre is all about.”
Michael Kelligan Theatre Wales website
Further information and full reviews, click here Almond and the Seahorse Plays (coming soon).
Buy The Almond and the Seahorse at www.gwales.com or www.amazon.co.uk or from Sherman Cymru:
branwen.davies@shermancymru.co.uk
Bora Bistrah: an international intercultural project by BBC Radio 3 to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of Partition and the creation and independence of India and Pakistan.
Kaite was one of five writers from all over the world commissioned to write about the Pakistani diaspora from specific localities: Bradford, Beijing, Nairobi, Karachi and Detroit. Kaite’s contribution, American Born Confused Desi was based on research and interviews with Pakistani immigrants in Detroit and Chicago undertaken when she was in the American Midwest earlier this year.
The play was transmitted at 8pm on BBC Radio 3 Sunday 19th August 2007.
Directed by Shabina Aslam
Kaite has been awarded a 2007 writing bursary from Y Academi, the Wales-based literature agency, in order to complete her first novel.
PUBLICATIONS:
Face on
Disability Arts in Ireland and Beyond
edited by Kaite O'Reilly
An international publication exploring Disability and Deaf arts and culture in an Irish context.
“Face On is a milestone for the disability arts movement in Ireland, a crucial point of reference in a shifting landscape”
Fintan O’Toole, critic, journalist and cultural commentator
“…a wonderful book…”
Geof Armstrong, Director National Disability Arts Forum, UK
"On a landmark disability arts publication"
Chris Tally Evans, New Welsh Review. See the full article here.
You can as well have a look at the New Welsh Review ("On a landmark disability arts publication") by Chris Tally Evans here.
Featuring 24 contributions from key thinkers and artists from the disciplines of visual art, dance, theatre, literature, film and comedy, Face On presents cultural and political commentary, poetry, academic essays, life writing, extracts from existing scripts and a wealth of visual art.
To order copies of Face On, Price €15/£10
Contact: Katrina Goldstone at Create
telephone +353-1-4736600
e-mail: communications@create-ireland.ie
For further information on Arts & Disability Ireland and Create
www.adiarts.ie and www.create-ireland.ie
telephone +353-1-4736600
e-mail: adi@artsincontext.com
A Memorial of Scattered Bodies: Alternative Dramaturgies informed by a d/Deaf and Disability Perspective
is an essay by Kaite in the eleventh volume of The Open Page issue 11, journal of the Magdalena Project - Women Theatre Practice
"Cripping up is the twenty-first century's answer to blacking up":
Conversation with Kaite O'Reilly on theatre, feminism and disability',
Gender Forum, vol. 12. (2005) http://www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de
An analysis of 'Peeling' in Jozefina Komporaly's recent publication
"Staging Motherhood: British Women Playwrights, 1956 to the Present" -
Palgrave, ISBN 1-4039-9909-0.
