AWARD-WINNING WRITER KAITE O’REILLY REJOINS NATIONAL THEATRE WALES WITH SIX DEAF & DISABLED PERFORMERS FOR IN WATER I’M WEIGHTLESS -
PART OF THE LONDON 2012 FESTIVAL
In Water I’m Weightless, which takes a provocative look at the body, will be performed in Cardiff and London by a cast of six Deaf and disabled performers.
In a dynamic staging combining movement and live projections, Kaite O’Reilly’s poetic, poignant and at times explosively funny texts are inspired by the imagination, experiences and attitudes of disabled people across the UK.
In Water I’m Weightless is one of the commissions for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad Unlimited programme celebrating disability, arts, culture and sport on an unprecedented scale. It has been selected to be part of the London 2012 Festival, the spectacular 12-week nationwide celebration running from 21 June until 9 September 2012, bringing together leading artists from across the world with the very best from the UK.
With movement direction by Nigel Charnock, this ground-breaking production from National Theatre Wales celebrates the athleticism, diversity and skill of the company, whilst exploring the endless possibilities of human difference.
Six of the very best Deaf and disabled performers in the UK will be swapping roles and using intense physicality and dance to tell vivid stories of life as a disabled person, in this controversial production which brings National Theatre Wales to London for the first time. The production will be presented alongside the other 28 Unlimited commissions at Unlimited: the Revelation Starts Here (31 August – 9 September), a 10-day celebration at London’s Southbank Centre.
Writer Kaite O’Reilly has won various awards for her work, including the Peggy Ramsay Award for YARD (Bush Theatre, London), MEN Best Play of 2004 for Perfect (Contact Theatre), finalist of the 2009 International Susan Smith Blackburn Award for The Almond and the Seahorse (Sherman Cymru) and 2010/11 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for her retelling of Aeschylus’s The Persians (National Theatre Wales). Other productions in 2012 include The Echo Chamber (The Llanarth Group) and another Cultural Olympiad project, LeanerFasterStronger (Chol/Sheffield Crucible). She works extensively within disability arts and culture and is one of the patrons of DaDa (Disability Arts and Deaf Arts). She is a Fellow of International Research Centre “Interweaving Performance Cultures”, Freie Universitat, Berlin, and is currently completing her first novel. www.kaiteoreilly.com
Director John E McGrath is Artistic Director of National Theatre Wales. Previously Artistic Director of Contact Theatre, Manchester, John trained in New York, where he was also Associate Director of Mabou Mines. In 2005, he was awarded the NESTA Cultural Leadership Award. He directed National Theatre Wales’ inaugural production, A Good Night Out In The Valleys, in March 2010, and Love Steals Us from Loneliness in October 2010. He directed The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning for National Theatre Wales in April 2012.
Paul Clay is an award-winning designer and media artist. Projects include design for the Broadway musical Rent, New York, Shelf Life for National Theatre Wales/Volcano Theatre/Welsh National Opera, Swansea, and Commedia for De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam. He received the Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards Best Design award for Perfect at Contact Theatre, Manchester, UK; the Municipal Arts Society Times Square Spectacular Award from Tibor Kalman for his redesign of the marquee and exterior of the Nederlander Theater, as well as a Drama Desk award, for Rent, Los Angeles. Other awards include the National Endowment for the Arts/ TCG Fellowship, and the Bessie award.
Nigel Charnock is and orphan and has become an adopted son of Wales. He trained in acting at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, in dance at the London School of Contemporary dance. He co-founded DV8 Physical Theatre in 1986 and his own company in 1996. He was the artistic director of Helsinki Dance Company for five years, and now works all over the world choreographing, directing and teaching. He has written a number of plays which have toured internationally. Nigel now realises that all this is quite meaningless and so he spends most of his time laughing at everything and everybody and talking to animals.
The cast includes: Mandy Colleran, Mat Fraser, Karina Jones, Nick Phillips, Sophie Stone and David Toole.
Mandy Colleran has been involved in disability arts for over 20 years. Her theatre credits include: The Mermaid and the Mirror (Half Moon Young People’s Theatre) and Welcome to the Institute (Fittings Multimedia). Radio credits include: Walkie Talkies (BBC Radio 3). Writing credits include: The Alphabet Soup Show (BBC).
Mat Fraser is a multi-disciplinary performing artist and writer, working in theatre, film and television, live art, cabaret, neo-sideshow and burlesque, conference chairing and public speaking. He was a rock drummer for 16 years before giving up his invisibility and complacency in mainstream arts to become a disability artist, which liberated his personal voice.
In the last 16 years he has produced bodies of work ranging from blisteringly angry to cheeky and funny, ridiculous to sublime. Covering the history and re-emergence of freak shows (he still works in Coney Island's Sideshow every Summer), contemporary issues to do with the disabled body and its continuing insufficient, inaccurate, and often insulting portrayal in mainstream arts, working a lot with images of sexuality and eroticism, Mat has always been fascinated by reactions to disabled performers throughout history and the present, and he continues this work as he matures. Television work includes documentaries such as his study of freak shows and disabled performers in history, Born Freak, as well as an historical look at the drug his Mum took, Happy Birthday Thalidomide, and for his acting work in both feature films and shorter dramas, TV series, such as his leading role in the BBC’s feature Every Time You Look At Me (2004), the lead role in the new cult action and first ‘Cripsploitation’ film, Unarmed But Dangerous (2009), as well as having had a character part of Will in drama Channel 4’s, Cast Offs. His own written stage work includes the award winning one man play Sealboy:Freak (2001/2), and the infamously bad taste musical comedy Thalidomide!! A Musical (2005/6). His current international touring solo comedy show From Freak To Clique? is a very funny, provoking, and often offensively funny look at the history of disability portrayal in the media.
He is also a conference chair, host for one day business events, an after-dinner and keynote speaker, the title holder of the Erotic Award (U.K.) for Best Male Striptease artist 2007, an International burlesque MC, a writer of erotica, co presenter of the BBC’s award winning disability website Ouch’s monthly podcast. www.matfraser.co.uk
Karina Jones has a BA Hons in performing arts from Liverpool University and an MA with distinction in voice studies from the Central School of Speech and Drama.
Her theatre credits include: several national tours for Graeae theatre company including: The Changeling, Flower Girls, The Last Freak Show and a co-production with Frantic Assembly and Paynes Plough entitled On Blindness. She has toured Scotland three times with The Citizens theatre Glasgow and Birds of Paradise. She was nominated for a Manchester Evening News award fro Best Actress for Crystal Clear at The Lowry Theatre. Radio credits include: two series of Solo Parent Pals for R4’s Woman’s Hour. Television credits include: The Bill and Crimewatch.
Nick Phillips trained at The Laban Centre of Movement and Dance in the mid-90s before returning to Swansea to work as part of several community theatre projects including pantos and dance nights. Thirteen years ago, he was in an accident and now uses a wheelchair. From then on, he shied away from performing with it all being a bit too “wheelchair weird” for him. In the past four or five years, after finding himself in a dance piece by mistake (“I was only supposed to be watching a rehearsal”), Nick has taken part in a couple of community dance and theatre performances including National Theatre Wales’ The Passion and dancing again with the all male dance group previously called Dynion.
Sophie Stone graduated in 2008 from RADA; the first deaf student to have trained there. She has since worked in film, alongside Timothy Spall and Brenda Blethyn among others, several television roles including Olive Runcie in the ITV series Marchlands by James Kent, Holby City, Casualty, and ITV2 Comedy FM. Sophie has toured with theatre company Shared Experience on Mine, with major roles in plays such as Pandora at the Arcola by Alex Clifton, and various shows at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury. She also appeared in the iconic role of Kattrin in Deborah Warner's epic production of Mother Courage and Her Children with Fiona Shaw at The National Theatre. When not acting, Sophie is a consultant for disability confidence in the arts.
David Toole came into dance through workshops with CandoCo Dance Company in 1992. While working with them, he studied for a year at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance, receiving a Professional Diploma in Community Dance in 1993. Six years of national and international touring with CandoCo followed, until 1999, when he decided to try new experiences. In 1995, David had his first taste of theatre when he played the part of Puck in Benjamin Britten's opera of A Midsummer Night's Dream. This was followed a year later with an appearance in the Sally Potter film The Tango Lesson, playing the part of the designer.
David has also performed with Graeae Theatre Company in 2000 and also 2001, playing the parts of Edgar in The Fall of the House of Usher and Deflores in The Changeling respectively. In the summer of 2000, he worked with DV8, creating and performing the piece Can We Afford This for the Sydney Arts Festival prior to the 2000 Olympics. This show was revived in 2003 and also led to the film version of the show being made that year. Since then, David has done more theatre work, notably with the RSC in 2007 and most recently working on three separate site-specific pieces with the Leeds based company Slung Low. David now works as a freelance dancer, actor and workshop leader. He has just returned from Cape Town where he worked with Remix Dance Company, Lucy Hind and Dom Coyote creating a new work, Boundless, for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
Theatre credits include: I’ll be the Devil (RSC), Where’s Vietnam? (Red Ladder), Blasted, The Iron Man (Graeae), Dodgems (CoisCeim) and They Only Come At Night-Resurrection (Slung Low).
Film credits include: Cost of Living (DV8, Lloyd Newson), The Tango Lesson (Sally Potter), and Amazing Grace (Michael Apted). Television credits include: Rome (HBO), I’m Spazticus (Channel 4), Outside In (BBC) and Naked on the Inside (Kim Farra). |
