ABSTRACT
Charlotte Keatley was nominated Laurence Olivier Most Promising Newcomer to British Theatre in 1990 for her play, My Mother Said I Never Should. The play premiered at Contact Theatre, Manchester, in 1987, won the George Devine Award in 1987 and the Manchester Evening News Best New Play Award, before an acclaimed run at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1989. The play has since been translated and produced in fifteen countries and is an A-level set text. It is the most widely performed play ever written by a British woman. Other work includes: setting up a performance art company in 1982 –4, for which she co-devised and acted in Dressing for Dinner. In 1985–6, Keatley wrote, designed, directed and choreographed The Legend of Padgate, a musical community play for Warrington, including eighty actors and musicians; Waiting for Martin toured by the English Shakespeare company in Britain and Canada in 1987. She co-wrote Fear and Misery in the Third Term for Liverpool Playhouse in 1989; The Singing Ringing Tree for children (Contact Theatre, 1991–2); numerous radio plays for BBC, and a live broadcast on the fall of the Berlin Wall. For television, Keatley has written Badger for Granada, nominated for the Prix Danube in 1989; and the film Falling Slowly for Channel Four/European Co-production Association. She co-directed Heathcote Williams’ Autogeddon, which won a 1991 Edinburgh Festival Fringe First Award. Two new plays, Our Father and The Genius of Her Sex will open in 1995. Keatley also teaches playwriting in schools and universities.
