The Beauty Parade
by Kaite O'Reilly
4 March 2020 to 15 March 2020
Venue:
Wales Millenium Centre
Country:
Web site:
Dear friends and colleagues,
wishing you a brilliant 2020 (and happy Lunar new Year).
Please find below some information about my forthcoming co-production with Wales Millennium Centre: The Beauty Parade. This is quite a personal project for me, seeded in stories told to me many years ago by my 'adopted Grandma', Molly Schuessele, and building upon my 2017/18 Creative Wales Major Award: The performative power of words with music. It's a collaboration between Deaf and hearing artists - composer Rebecca Applin and visual language expert/performer Sophie Stone. This time I've written for spoken, sung, projected and visual languages, and will co-direct with Phillip Zarrilli. Please find details and the link to trailer, below. I hope you might be able to join us, as we honour the women and their dangerous work (1941-44), rendered invisible.
Warmest wishes,
Kaite
"We are the secret moon squadrons. Dropped by moonlight to set Europe ablaze."
It’s the 1940s, deep in wartime, men are fighting on the front line and women don’t engage in armed combat; they keep the fires burning, the factories going, and the children fed at home. Or so we were told...
Pioneering theatre-maker Kaite O’Reilly collaborates with composer Rebecca Applin and performer/visual language expert Sophie Stone to expose one of the most unique operations of the Second World War; whereby ordinary women were plucked from obscurity and parachuted behind enemy lines.
These falling women, spiralling through the dark became saboteurs and silent killers. Sent to spy, to eavesdrop, to encourage the spilling of secrets.
The project’s code name? The Beauty Parade.
28/02/2020