Segal Center World Voices Festival: KAITE O'REILLY (Ireland/UK)

The Segal Center presents our annual World Voices Festival: a three-day festival showcasing the work of renowned, international theatre artists.

On Thursday, May 1st, the festival features the work of Kaite O'Reilly, a playwright and dramaturg known internationally for her pioneering work in disability theatre and performance. A reading of selections of O'Reilly's plays, including from her most recent project The Sisters Grey, will be followed by a talkback with the playwright and the reading's director Katie Butler.

5:00 pm — Reading of selected works by Kaite O'Reilly, directed by Katie Butler

6:00 pm — Conversation with Kaite O'Reilly and Katie Butler

6:30 to 8:30 pm — Disability + Deaf Performance: A Conversation

The Segal Center will present excerpts from O'Reilly's The Sisters Grey and The 'd' Monologues.

Written by Kaite O'Reilly, directed by Katie Butler.

Featuring: Bree Rothbart & Melissa Jennifer Gonzalez

The 'd' Monologues:

Since the Ancient Greeks disabled characters have appeared in plays, but rarely have the writers been disabled or written from that embodied or politicized perspective. The vast majority of disabled characters in the Western theatrical canon are tropes, reinforcing limited notions of what it is to be ʻnormalʼ rather than broadening the lens and embracing all the possibilities of human variety. I wanted to make work solely for disabled and Deaf performers, informed by the Social Model of disability. From 2010 I embarked on this on-going project, writing fictional monologues informed by interviews and conversations with Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people, users and survivors of the mental health system and those with long term or chronic illness across the world. The monologues presented here include new, previously unperformed work alongside the following: my National Theatre Wales/Cultural Olympiad commission 'In Water I'm Weightless', celebrating the 2012 London Olympics/Paralympics; from the intercultural international Unlimited commission 'And Suddenly I Disappear', between Singapore and the UK and 'Something Wonderful', from the Beijing 'd' Monologues, created over lockdown.

The Sisters Grey:

The work-in-progress is from a new performance text, revisiting the ancient Greek myth of The Graiai.

Artists:

Kaite O’Reilly is a multi-award winning playwright and dramaturg, who writes for radio, screen and live performance. She is known internationally for her pioneering work in Disability culture. Prizes include the Peggy Ramsay Award, Manchester Theatre Award, Theatre-Wales Award and the Ted Hughes Award for new works in Poetry for Persians (National Theatre Wales). She is a two time finalist in the International James Tait Black Prize for Innovation in Drama (2012, 2019) and The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She was honoured in the 2017/18 International Eliot Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy for developing ‘Alternative Dramaturgies informed by a Deaf and disability Perspective’. She was associate dramaturg for National Theatre Wales and production dramaturg/narrative director for Rambert’s Peaky Blinders dance theatre, The Redemption of Thomas Shelby, currently touring. Kaite’s plays Atypical Plays for Atypical Actors and The ‘d’ Monologues are published by Oberon/Methuen/ Bloomsbury. International work includes the 2018 Unlimited Commission And Suddenly I Disappear: The Singapore/Wales ‘d’ Monologues, a collaboration between Deaf and disabled artists and Something Wonderful, inspired by lived experience of disability in China. Her plays the 9 fridas and The ‘d’ Monologues had their Korean premiere in Seoul, 2021. Her first feature film, The Almond and the Seahorse won the Special Jury’s prize at Dinard Film Festival. Featuring Rebel Wilson and Charlotte Gainsbourg, it was released in the UK in 2024. She is currently part of the writers’ lab at Royal Opera House Covent Garden and developing a television series with a disabled female protagonist.

Katie Butler (director) is a disabled writer, performer, director, and lifelong student and educator. Katie is based in Pittsburgh, currently serving as Visiting Faculty of Movement with Carnegie Mellon University. Katie completed her MFA in Devised and Physical Performance at The Pig Iron School in Philadelphia, and is a founding member of Philadelphia’s Shakespeare on Tap, an improvisational Shakespeare company. Katie is currently working on an essay with HowlRound positing an emerging framework for accessible movement pedagogies and looks forward to continuing to grow in disabled artist communities.

Bree Rothbart (Deino) is thrilled to be acting in THE SISTERS GREY. A theatreworker since 1990, Bree has been utilized in multiple positions. However, having begun her career as an actor, it will always be her first love. Bree’s artistic dedication involves using performance as a tool to end oligarchic autocracy.

Melissa Jennifer Gonzalez (Pemphredo) An ultimate triple threat! And by that, they’re Colombian, autistic, and queer. Their most notable work was starring in the award-nominated short film, Cripfished. This year, Melissa has appeared in the short thriller, The Sister Pope, a current entry for the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge. Melissa has workshopped and starred in their autobiographical musical MissDemeanor, and created the online short sketch Corona & The QuaranTinas. INSTAGRAM: @notorious_m.j.g

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FULL FESTIVAL LINEUP

MAY 1

5pm: Selected works by Kaite O'Reilly (Ireland/UK), directed by Katie Butler

*Followed by a panel on disability and performance.

MAY 3

3pm: Almost Human by Kathrine Nedrejord (Norway), directed by Seth Bockley

5:30pm:The Blood of the Souls the Night Reaps by Christos Panagiotakis (Greece), directed by April Sweeney

MAY 5

6:30pm: Highway 7 by Haeyoul Bae (South Korea), directed by Seonjae Kim

These readings are free and open to the public. First come, first served.

Segal Center 2025 World Voices Playwrights

Haeyoul Bae is a playwright from South Korea. Works include: Highway 7; Stir-Fried Memories with Vienna Sausages; Here, Once, Gaga; Once Upon a Time, There Was an Asian Small-Clawed Otter Living in Seoul City; Temple of April; Saving the Goat; 1994, 2014, and the Space in between; Magnolia Balloon; Dogs Without Masters. Awards include: 2021 Byuksan Culture Awards, Play Award; 2022 Donga Play Awards, Best Play; 2024 New Play Contest by National Theatre Company of Korea, Excellence Award; 2025 Lee Yeong-man Theatrical Awards for Playwright.

Kathrine Nedrejord is a playwright and author from the indigenous Sami community in Norway. Nedrejord is especially interested in exploring hierarchies, colonialism and the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator in her works. For her first play Brent jord (*Scorched Earth) she was nominated for the Ibsen Prize in 2015. In 2018 she became the first female playwright in residence at the National Theatre in Oslo. Stagings and readings of her plays have been done in several countries like France, Luxembourg, Germany, Sweden and Finland as well as Norway. She has written and published twelve books in Norway. Her novel Forbryter og staff (*Criminal and punishment) was nominated for the prestigious Nordic Council Literary Award and was recently staged at the Det Norske Teatret. Her latest novel Sameproblemet (*The Sami Problem) has won the Brage Literary Award as well at the Oktober award, and are set to be published in six other countries. 

Kaite O’Reilly is a multi-award winning playwright and dramaturg, who writes for radio, screen and live performance. She is known internationally for her pioneering work in Disability culture. Prizes include the Peggy Ramsay Award, Manchester Theatre Award, Theatre-Wales Award and the Ted Hughes Award for new works in Poetry for Persians (National Theatre Wales). She is a two time finalist in the International James Tait Black Prize for Innovation in Drama (2012, 2019) and The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She was honoured in the 2017/18 International Eliot Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy for developing ‘Alternative Dramaturgies informed by a Deaf and disability Perspective’. She was associate dramaturg for National Theatre Wales and production dramaturg/narrative director for Rambert’s Peaky Blinders dance theatre, The Redemption of Thomas Shelby, currently touring. Kaite’s plays Atypical Plays for Atypical Actors and The ‘d’ Monologues are published by Oberon/Methuen/ Bloomsbury. International work includes the 2018 Unlimited Commission And Suddenly I Disappear: The Singapore/Wales ‘d’ Monologues, a collaboration between Deaf and disabled artists and Something Wonderful, inspired by lived experience of disability in China. Her plays the 9 fridas and The ‘d’ Monologues had their Korean premiere in Seoul, 2021. Her first feature film, The Almond and the Seahorse won the Special Jury’s prize at Dinard Film Festival. Featuring Rebel Wilson and Charlotte Gainsbourg, it was released in the UK in 2024. She is currently part of the writers’ lab at Royal Opera House Covent Garden and developing a television series with a disabled female protagonist.

Christos Panagiotakis was born and raised in Antiphilippi, Kavala, a village at the foot of Mount Pangaion in Greece. A graduate of the Drama School "Karolos Koun” Art Theater (1986), he worked in theater as an actor until 1997 and acted in the cinema and television series. As a writer he published the poetry collection Acrobat at the Edge of Time (2018). Later he published the first part of his trilogy, based on fifteen-syllable verse, entitled, The Blood is of Souls that the Night Reaps (2020), and the second part, entitled The Centrifugal (2023). The Executioner (2023) is the third part of the trilogy - a tribute to the homonymous fifteen-syllable verse known since the 10 th AD and popular in traditional Greek folk songs. Some of his poems have been set to music. At present he is working on his first novel.

This event is supported by the Norwegian Consulate General in New York.