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Atypical Plays for Atypical Actors: Selected Plays
Atypical Plays For Atypical Actors is the first of its 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 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.
Includes the 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.
328 pages, Paperback
Published September 27, 2016
About the author
Kaite O'Reilly
13 books5 followersKaite is an award-winning playwright, dramaturg and prose writer. She was awarded the 2010/11 Ted Hughes Award for New Works in Poetry for her new version of Aeschylus's 'Persians', directed site-specifically on Ministry of Defence land in Wales by Mike Pearson in National Theatre Wales's inaugural year. Two recent productions were part of the Cultural Olympiad, celebrating the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics, produced at Sheffield Theatres, Wales Millennium Centre and Southbank Centre, London. She blogs on creativity and process at www.kaiteoreilly.wordpress.com She is completing her first novel.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 11, 2016
This is a very important and wonderful book!
I wonder if it should be called: Exceptional Plays for Exceptional Actors ?
Which would be true - although maybe it's actually: Very Exceptional etc etc
I was lucky enough to hear Kaite speaking recently, and get a glimpse into her special self. It was especially great to hear her talking about the community that she has been a part of (and see them all flocking around each other like the happiest of birds and monkeys and elephants and whats-your-favourite-and-cleverest-and-loveliest-beast).
And then, straight afterwards, I was super-lucky enough to see a video of one of her plays! There was even one of the actors sitting in the back, who I plucked up courage to, very humbly, coo over (I'm not clever enough to praise super-good actors!)
So, anyway, I was expecting good things from the book.
And it was even BETTER than I was hoping!
It's funny, sexy, smart, scary and lots lots more.
I'm going to re-read and, I expect, re-read over again.
And I'm quite sure, organise myself to see more of her writing on the stage. Where it lives!
Thanks Kaite for being yourself. Thanks especially, Kaite, for letting others see and share your luscious, deep words!
I wonder if it should be called: Exceptional Plays for Exceptional Actors ?
Which would be true - although maybe it's actually: Very Exceptional etc etc
I was lucky enough to hear Kaite speaking recently, and get a glimpse into her special self. It was especially great to hear her talking about the community that she has been a part of (and see them all flocking around each other like the happiest of birds and monkeys and elephants and whats-your-favourite-and-cleverest-and-loveliest-beast).
And then, straight afterwards, I was super-lucky enough to see a video of one of her plays! There was even one of the actors sitting in the back, who I plucked up courage to, very humbly, coo over (I'm not clever enough to praise super-good actors!)
So, anyway, I was expecting good things from the book.
And it was even BETTER than I was hoping!
It's funny, sexy, smart, scary and lots lots more.
I'm going to re-read and, I expect, re-read over again.
And I'm quite sure, organise myself to see more of her writing on the stage. Where it lives!
Thanks Kaite for being yourself. Thanks especially, Kaite, for letting others see and share your luscious, deep words!
Displaying 1 of 1 review