Chapter, Cardiff Wednesday May 17th
Yard
AWARD WINNING PLAY BY KAITE O’REILLY
The knives are out at the family-run Birmingham slaughterhouse when daughter Fin Rourke returns home. Ma and Da - 'Bull man' Rourke - are so busy not talking to each other that they hardly have time to register their daughter's arrival. Da has taken on lovestruck dolt Rory as an apprentice, while scallywag uncle Skully is hanging about making eyes at his brother's wife. It's a bold and beautifully affectionate piece of writing from the heart.
“…The talent that Kaite O’Reilly shows is unusual: bloody, poetic, rhetorical, full of violent emotion, but civilised and savage. It is very much like Jacobean drama – but modern and in microcosm… emotional savagery…YARD’s virtues are so unusual, you can easily see why it became joint winner of the Peggy Ramsay Award for best new writing in 1998 .”
The Financial Times
A play with astonishing Irish lyricism and imaginative writing about apprenticeship, love, family feuds and betrayal, strong theatrical meat.
A script-held performance directed by Elen Bowman
(Elen Bowman is an Associate Director of Sgript Cymru, she recently directed Cymru Fach in a successful tour for the company. For television she has directed the award winning series Andami and the recent A470 and many other plays and series. Kaite O’Reilly’s latest work The Almond and the Seahorse will be the latest Sgript Cymru Commission).
The final play in Michael Kelligan’s On The Edge Spring season.
Additional information
Cardigan based Kaite O’Reilly is a multi-award winning playwright. She was runner-up in the Royal Court Young Writers' Festival, co-winner of the Peggy Ramsay Award (1998), with her play Yard. Her remarkable play Peeling won the Theatre-Wales best new play (2003) Perfect. Received the Manchester Evening News best play of 2004.
Yard opened at the Bush Theatre, London in 1998, in German translation, Schlachthaus, it ran successfully in repertoire at the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin for almost two years. Her play Speaking Stones opened at Theatre Asou, Graz, Austria. Belonging was given its first production by The Birmingham Repertory Company. As a dramaturg and tutor, Kaite has been involved with writernet and Graeae Theatre Company's mentoring scheme, this led their renowned project disPlay4 at Soho Theatre. Out of this came the Graeae Theatre’s striking production of Peeling. It opened at, the Birmingham Rep Theatre in February 2002, and toured nationally, visiting the Soho Theatre, London, The Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Theatre Montansier, Versailles, France, Warwick Arts Centre, Drum Theatre, Plymouth, Unity Theatre, Liverpool, Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster, Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton, Tobacco Theatre, Bristol and Project Cube, Dublin.
Her work has also been seen at the Manchester Royal Exchange and the Assembly Rooms at the Edinburgh Festival, and has been produced in Ireland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Poland (the Grotowski Centre), Spain, Croatia and Australia.
She was awarded Arts and Humanities Research Council Creative Fellow 2003-2006. (Alternative Dramaturgies informed by a Deaf and Disability perspective) at Exeter University. Out of this has arisen two projects, first, Silent Rhythms, a collaboration with dancer Denise Armstrong and visual artist Alison Jones. The project is informed by the female artists' sensory impairments, using them as a source of inspiration for creativity. And second, In Praise of Fallen Women, an exploration of the oldest profession in the world, through the lives of courtesans, happy hookers, sex workers and cross-dressing rent 'boys' in Edwardian London. Here she is collaborating with acclaimed performers/devisers Jeni Draper and Jean St Clair, the trio that worked with Graeae director, Jenny Sealey on her production of Peeling, In Praise of Fallen Women will open at the Drill Hall , London in July this year. She has just completed a new script, The Almond and the Seahorse, commission by Sgript Cymru. She has also written a number of radio plays and film scripts.
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