Kaite is a Writer, Playwright, Dramaturg, Director, teacher and identifies as a disability artist.
She 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 Persians (National Theatre Wales).
Productions in 2012 include The Echo Chamber (The Llanarth Group) and two Cultural Olympiad projects, LeanerFasterStronger (Chol/Sheffield Crucible) and In Water I’m Weightless, an Unlimited commission, produced by National Theatre Wales. 2014 saw Forest Forge’s Woman of Flowers (published by Aurora Metro), written for Sophie Stone to perform in spoken and visual languages. In 2016 her play about survivors of Traumatic Brian Injury, The Almond and The Seahorse, receives its German language premiere at Theater Wurzburg and her performance text about Frida Kahlo the 9 Fridas, closing production for the 2014 Taipei International Festival, transfers to Hong Kong. Cosy, an Unlimited Commission, will tour nationally and appear at the Unlimited Festivals at Southbank Centre and Tramway.
Her work has been produced in Ireland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Poland, Spain, Croatia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, USA and Australia.
She has had seven plays produced by BBC Radio 3 and 4. Her prose has appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. She edited Shelf Life for NDAF and FACE ON: Disability Arts in Ireland and Beyond for Arts Disability Ireland. She is a Fellow of International Research Centre “Interweaving Performance Cultures”, Freie Universitat, Berlin, where she has been reflecting on her work between so-called mainstream and disability culture, and hearing and Deaf culture, publishing academic papers. Her plays are published by faber&faber, Aurora Metro and Oberon books, including Atypical Plays for Atypical Actors: Selected Plays by Kaite O’Reilly (Oberon, 2016). Kaite works internationally as a dramaturg, mentor and tutor, working with theatre companies and educational institutes to develop emerging and established artists’ performance work.
She is also patron of Disability Arts Cymru and Agent 160.
Further information on her work: www.kaiteoreilly.com Her blog on process and creativity: www.kaiteoreilly.wordpress.com