We’re delighted to have BrokenCrow Theatre Company returning to us with their hugely popular Play Clinics!
The Play Clinics take the form of two hour sessions in which BrokenCrow, and invited readers, will read the plays and scripts of those taking part in the clinic and offer them constructive feedback. BrokenCrow’s whole way of working involves intense feedback from a multidisciplinary team of actors, writers, designers and directors.
The successful applicants for this Play Clinic are Natasha Everitt, Muddy D Norman, Naomi Louisa O’Connell and Connor McKenna. BrokenCrow will be sitting down with them to read and discuss their work as part of their residency in Garter Lane, supported by The Arts Council.
Natasha Everitt is a multidisciplinary experimental artist, who blends theatre, dance, film and performance art into her work. Her piece The Fear – submitted into the Play Clinic – sees 5 disparate characters deal with terribly troubling personifications of their own fear. ‘The Fear’ to each of characters is a maniacal, animalistic entity that preys on their insecurities, heightens their demons and has the potential to eat them alive. But can a voice of hope in their most troubling moments give them the light they need to leave the darkness behind? Or will they be eaten alive by The Fear?
Muddy D Norman graduated from the Oscar theatre School in 1989 and formed Hard Tactics Theatre company, who produced The Holding cell by Joe Hinche in the City Arts Centre. Muddy Has Two collections of poetry published with Seabhac Press Dublin, the first, Songs From The Warn Hole published in 2012 and the second Whale Bones published in 2019. At the Play Clinics, we will be interrogating a new piece of writing called The Ressurectionists.
Naomi Louisa O’Connell made her professional debut in 2012 starring on the West End in Terrence McNally’s play Master Class. Sought after for her interpretations of contemporary opera, she recently created the role of Mrs. Van Buren in Intimate Apparel by Ricky Ian Gordon and Lynn Nottage at Lincoln Center Theater, seen on PBS Great Performances. As a writer, she has been published in Art of Place (2021) and was a 2022 winner of Music Network’s Resonate Award to develop the libretto for MISS. She has written for Boston Lyric Opera and New York Festival of Song, and was recently awarded a Culture Moves Europe grant and Arts Council Bursary to develop a new work focusing on 1920s cabaret in Berlin. A graduate of The Juilliard School, she has collaborated on projects that vary from sound sculpture installations to cabarets to virtual reality performance art. She premiered Emma O’Halloran’s virtuosic monodrama Mary Motorhead at New York’s Prototype Festival and LA Opera where her “startling, spectacularly animated performance” (Broadway World) was applauded by critics as “stellar—a great operatic impersonation of the ecstatic driving force of an inner being.” (LA Times) We will be reading a section of her new work; Miss.
Connor McKenna is a playwright, dramaturg, and musical book writer. He is a recent graduate of NYU Tisch with a BFA in dramatic writing and double major in linguistics, and he is currently pursuing an MA in Playwriting & Dramaturgy at the University of Galway. He has written six full-length plays and several shorter one-acts. His work has been performed with the Young American’s Theatre Company (Production of one-act Bears, Booze, and the Band Teacher’s Stepdaughter), Imaginarium NY (Staged reading of full-length On the Education of Imperial Daughters), and Little & Fierce Theatre Company (Workshop of full-length Aztec). Connor also worked on the executive board of the Broke People Play Festival, a new works festival in New York City, for whom he served as co-president and artistic director for his two years. In addition, Connor is a passionate linguist and avid creator of constructed languages. BrokenCrow will be sitting down with Connor to interrogate The Gods Must Feel Envy.
