Atypical Plays for Atypical Actors

Selected Plays

Kaite O'Reilly

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781783193172
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781783193189
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

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.

peeling was written exclusively for performers identifying as Deaf, disabled or neuro-divergent.

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 premiered in 2016, appearing at the Unlimited Festivals at Southbank Centre and Tramway.

The 9 Fridas; Cosy; and The Almond and The Seahorse: These performance texts and plays were written for an inclusive, diverse cast of disabled, non-disabled, hearing and Deaf identifying performers.

cosy

Kaite O’Reilly in association with Wales Millennium Centre and The Llanarth Group, supported by Unlimited.

Cosy premiered at Wales Millennium Centre on 8 March 2016

Cast
ROSE	Sharon Morgan
ED	Ri Richards
CAMILLE	Ruth Lloyd
GLORIA	Llinos Daniel
ISABELLA	Bethan Rose Young
MAUREEN	Sara Beer

Directed by	Phillip Zarrilli
Designed by	Simon Banham
Lighting by	Ace McCarron
Costume by	Holly McCarthy
Associate Producer	Sandra Bendelow
Assistant Producer	Tom Wentworth

Characters

ROSE

76. Mother to three daughters:

ED

55.

CAMILLE

50.

GLORIA

48.

ISABELLA

16. Camille’s daughter.

MAUREEN

Rose’s companion.

A large sitting room in a once grand house.

What follows is the rehearsal draft.
Some changes may be made in production.

PRESET

An empty space in pre-dawn light – settled shadows, indiscernible shapes. ROSE’s voice, intimate.

ROSE V/O:	That muffled silence at 3 A.M. – feeling the pump pump pump of your heart and the jaw going, any nonsense, any rubbish, anything just not to let the silence in, not let the pause fill. Those quiet hours of the night when you’re there, waiting for dawn. Waiting for the first trace of light, scanning the sky, holding your breath almost, willing the light, yes, willing the light –
Time passes, the lights change, revealing:

ONE

A large sitting room. Once gracious, it is now neglected and filled with wing chairs covered in dustsheets. CAMILLE stands with her suitcase. ED looks at her, waiting.

ED:	Put the case down.
	(CAMILLE doesn’t.)
	Sit.
	(CAMILLE doesn’t.)
	That’s right.
	(CAMILLE stands and looks.)
	Still the old homestead. Hasn’t changed.
CAMILLE:	I thought you might have modernised it a bit.
	You know, pulled up the lino, sandblasted the floorboards. There’s some lovely original tiles hidden under the runner in the entrance hall – blue, ochre and – sorry, I couldn’t help noticing when I came in.
ED:	You never did, before.
CAMILLE:	Professional eye?
ED:	And all that.
CAMILLE:	You could add a cornice to this room. Clean up that central rose – all the detail’s been blurred by layers of slapped on gloss, can you see? It’d put value on the house.
ED:	Would it?
CAMILLE:	It’s the little thing...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Peeling
• The Almond and the Seahorse
• In Water I’m Weightless
• The 9 Fridas
• Cosy