About

Kaite O’Reilly is an award-winning dramaturg, playwright, radio, film and TV scriptwriter, based in Wales. Her awards for writing include: winner of Ted Hughes Award, Peggy Ramsay Award, Theatre-Wales Award, Manchester Theatre Prize; she has been a two-time finalist in the James Tait Black Prize for Innovation in Drama and was honoured in the International Eliot Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy in 2017/18. Her debut feature film screenplay, The Almond and the Seahorse, produced by Mad as Birds Films, was released in 2024. Starring Rebel Wilson and Charlotte Gainsbourg, it won the Special Jury’s Prize (‘Hitchcock’) at Dinard Film Festival. Kaite was recognised as a Bold Voice in the 2025 Writers Lab International awards.

She was a MacDowell and Hawthornden Fellow and is a Fellow of Royal Society of Literature. She was AHRC Creative Fellow at Exeter University (2003-06) and Fellow of International Research Centre ‘interweaving performance cultures’, Freie Universitat, Berlin (2012-18), reflecting on her work in disability arts and between Deaf and hearing cultures.

O’Reilly was the resident dramaturg for The Llanarth Group and worked closely with its artistic director, Phillip Zarrilli, over twenty years and twenty productions in the UK, US, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Kerala, Singapore, Ireland, Portugal and Germany, many of these premieres of her plays. They co-created playing ‘The Maids’, co-wrote richard iii redux, shortlisted for the 2019 James Tait Black Prize for Innovation in Drama, and co-directed The Beauty Parade, in 2020.

She was mentor/dramaturg/creative exec’ for transmedia project GALWAD (Unboxed, live performance and Sky Arts, 2022), associate dramaturg for National Theatre Wales 2022-24, and since 2022 the production dramaturg and narrative director for Rambert’s on-going, internationally touring Peaky Blinder’s dance performance The Redemption of Thomas Shelby. She is currently co-adapting a new dance theatre piece with Rambert’s artistic director Benoit Swan Pouffer, for production in 2027.

 A leading figure in disability arts and culture, Kaite’s pioneering plays for disabled and Deaf actors are produced internationally most recently in Singapore, China and USA. Her acclaimed collections, Atypical Plays for Atypical Actors and The ‘d’ Monologues are published by Bloomsbury/Oberon. Her Unlimited International Commission And Suddenly I Disappear premiered in Singapore in 2018 (Access Path Productions/The Llanarth Group) and then transferred to London’s Southbank as part of the Unlimited Festival. This text, along with a Crip’ feminist reworking of Richard III -richard iii redux - co-written and directed by Phillip Zarrilli, is published in The ‘d’ Monologues (Oberon, 2018).

She received two Cultural Olympiad Commissions for In Water I’m Weightless, produced by National Theatre Wales/Southbank Centre as part of the official festival celebrating the 2012 London Olympics/Paralympics. She has received bursaries from Literature Wales and two prestigious Creative Wales Major Awards from Arts Council Wales. She is currently devising and directing Being Carried, a new Unlimited international commission which will premiere in Kuala Lumpur in Summer 2026. The Aotearoa ‘d’ Monologues will premiere in New Zealand in Autumn 2026, with long term collaborator Laura Haughey.

In 2024 she received a 4Nations International Award and British Council Connections through Culture bursary to develop performance dramaturgy in Deaf and disabled-led work in Aotearoa New Zealand, working with Equal Voices Arts and Arts Access Aotearoa.

Kaite is currently developing various projects in live performance, opera and film. She is part of the JPAP Opera Lab at Royal Opera and Ballet, Covent Garden.