1. Michelle Read
Playwright & Theatre Maker - Production History

2. ‘Game Over’ Dublin Youth Theatre, 2014

3. Game Over
A comedy for teenagers about death and suicide.
Titch, Mel and Nicky don’t know each other, but they’ve one thing in
common; they’ve all woken up in a strange place and they’re not sure
what the hell is going on. Mel was on a night out with her boy-racer
boyfriend and it looks like they might have crashed. Nicky was
shaking the vending machine at work and it may just have fallen on
top of her! And Titch? Well, Titch didn’t have a choice in the matter.
When Stormcry appears, they think he’ll have all the answers, but he’s
more confused than they are. Game Over is an existential comedy
about death, saying goodbye and maybe second chances.
http://www.nayd.ie/resources/find-a-play/

4. ‘The Nation’s Assets’
with
Kate Brennan and Don Wycherly
Tiny Plays for Ireland
Fishamble New Play Co,
Project Arts Centre,
Dublin, 2012
“Michelle Read’s depiction of the rise
and fall of the economy as a night of
spectatularly awkward sex in The
Nation’s Assets: “I think I’m
overextended.” groans the superb
(Don) Wycherly.”
The Irish Times, 22nd March 2012
“The Nation’s Assets sexes up finance
in a way that has to be seen to be
believed and gives a whole new
meaning to the expression the country
is f**ked.”
Evening Herald, 29th March 2012

5. Deadly Drama for D24
Eight new plays written with and for primary school children by Michelle Read

6. Playmaking with primary school children, 2012

7. Toxicby Michelle Read
Gaiety School of Acting
Graduation Show Commission 2011
In 2004 Britney sang Toxic and we
blagged our way into clubs with fake
IDs and sculled pints and Bacardi
Breezers and the future was rosy,
so we danced our arses off and
sucked the faces off each other and
worried about the kind of things that
kids worry about. And then, while
our backs were turned, while we
were busy growing up… I mean
f***k’s sake people, look at the state
of the place!
Toxic is a fast-paced, jump-cut style play set in
contemporary post-boom Dublin. Performed by an
ensemble of eighteen young actors and including a
karaoke-style pop vibe, the play speculates about
betrayal and the interaction between public ethics and
personal morality.
“…there was so much energy, like before a storm;
the air was crackling with it. And I thought, we’re
all just animals, there is no right and wrong.”

8. Hector (puppet dog) in the drug factory, Toxic, Project Arts Centre, GSA, 2011

9. Mike & Karen, Work-in-Progress, 2010
by Michelle Read in collaboration with Mike Wells & Karen McLachlan
Mike & Karen have been
friends for over twenty
years. Their relationship is
the real thing, but are they?
Scripted from edited
interviews and performed by
the real Mike and Karen
along with two professional
actors, the piece was a
performance experiment
exploring notions of
authenticity and the use of
lived experience in
performance.
Soho Theatre, London.
Created as part of my
Masters dissertation,
‘Presence and Authenticity:
An investigation into the
process and practice of
working with people as both
subject and performer in
theatre of the real.’

10. Worksong Work-in-Progress, 2009
A collaboration between theatre-maker Michelle Read and
composer Fionnuala Conway. The performance used
verbatim conversations with a variety of people about work.
Actors spoke (or “channelled”) the edited audio via
headsets and the stories were punctuated with sung
compositions inspired by the interviews and the
participants’ speech patterns.
Actor Karen Egan “channels” participant Nuala Rothery.

11. I visited Berlin as a schoolgirl in the early
eighties. The Wall was a big concept to take
in as a teenager, but the fact that I saw it
stayed with me and I remember feeling both
overwhelmed and challenged by the fact of it.
Snakelight was inspired by the East/West
divide in Berlin and by the idea of alternative
histories.

12. You Are Here
LIVING SPACE THEATRE, Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival, 2008
written by Ioanna Anderson, directed by Tara Derrington, produced by Michelle Read

14. You Are Here – DTF, 2008 – brought the audience inside a modern Dublin apartment where
characters were seen by night or by day in two separate but linked plays. The work was
extremely intimate, with a maximum audience of fifteen people per show, and offered
glimpses of the lives of some of the apartment’s occupants at different times in its history.
These layers of habitation overlapped as the spectator moved through the space witnessing
highly intimate moments and exploring the apartment’s artefacts and ghost voices.
Press
“…few plays will be able to match Living Space Theatre Group’s You Are Here in terms of originality
and sheer invention” Irish Daily Mail
“the set and sound design are quite ingenious… clever, interactive and different” Dublin Metro
“…the intimacy of the production is invigorating.” Sunday Tribune
“…characters saunter past each other without acknowledgement – as though the apartment holds
their stories in its rooms like distinct, separate memories.” Irish Times
“At moments it does feel as if you’ve been spirited right inside other lives” Irish Independent
“…the emotional texture of the relationships is hooked on hot contemporary anxieties surrounding
immigration, property and the difference between house and home” irish theatre magazine
“…the theatre tends to obscure the fact that it is, at base, an act of voyeurism. This production
celebrates that.” Sunday Tribune

15. The Other Side
by Michelle Read, with Tara Derrington & Natalie Stringer, 2003

16. The Other Side is about subjective experience and how we determine our own identity.
The play is set in a school building commandeered by the military in a turbulent African country (never specified).
Rioting has broken out and the characters, Dee and Kate, are being detained for their own safety, but against
their will in separate, adjacent rooms. The two characters are strangers who strike up a conversation through the
wall and are forced into an uneasy camaraderie by the extreme situation.
The “wall” that divides the characters continues through the audience, so that the spectator shares the subjective
viewpoint of the particular character they are watching. Thus one audience is split in two by a divider, each side
seeing one performer and hearing the other.

17. The Other Side
Written by Michelle Read - Directed by Tara Derrington
Co-created by Tara Derrington, Michelle Read and Natalie Stringer
A READCO Production
Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 2003
“The cleverness lies in the interplay of lies and truth, the exploitation of our unconscious tendency to use
visual information to check the veracity of what we are told.”
“raises, in a gentle, humorous and utterly unpretentious way, interesting questions about knowledge and
language, reality and representation, fact and fiction”
The Irish Times
“the threads of the tale are worked through carefully and expertly, meaning there is never a glitch, never a
lapse as the intricacies…are revealed”
“This is experimental theatre at its best. Holding onto the successful elements of the conventional story
based theatre, this show pushes boundaries without losing its audience in the process”
The Sunday Tribune
“not being able to see the other actress lends an air of increased suspense”
“A brilliant and stimulating night out, The Other Side takes you well beyond conventional theatrical
constraints.”
The Irish Examiner
“To engage with a moving, humorous and stylish piece of theatre while at the same time to become aware
of questions like these, and to walk away still questioning, still debating the truth of what has been seen, is
a rare and deeply satisfying experience.”
Irish Theatre Magazine

19. Síle Nic Chonaonaigh & Natalie Stringer in rehearsals for The Other Side

20. Play About My Dad
An Autobiographical performance by Michelle Read, 2004

21. “Although it is funny, warm, and even strangely detached there is an underlying
rawness to this simple human story…”
“…Read delivers a gem of a little work that speaks to us for long after we have
left it behind.”
The Sunday Tribune
“It’s a charming, well-observed piece… and it is not going to far to say that the
seeming artlessness is very much the art that conceals art.
The Sunday Independent
“Read carries the whole thing off with nerveless assurance.”
The Irish Times
Play About My Dad - Press

22. The idea for the environment was to create an enclosed space onto which we
could project in all four directions – Play About My Dad

23. Audience enter and sit in and around the space – Play About My Dad

24. Living Space – READCO, 2001
An experimetnal show which
explored early immersive
techniques with performance
improvisation and audience
interaction.
Developed throughout June 2001
in a Georgian House in Dublin,
the piece was created using a
collaborative devising process
with performers Brendan
Dempsey, Natalie Stringer, Kevin
Gildea, Stella Feehily, Karen
Scully and Michelle Read with
director Christopher White and
writer Pom Boyd. Performances
happened over five nights and the
audience was invited into a
strange B&B to discover some
odd communal living practices!
“The novel thing about this
experiment is the blurring of the
lines between performance and
reality… the performances are
universally excellent, with
frequently hilarious results.”
RTE ONLINE

25. Human Stories 1-6 were six fully
improvised playlets, performed as part of
the Dublin Fringe Festival 2000 at Bewley’s
Café Theatre, Grafton Street. The shows
were an experiment in long-form
improvisation (play length improvised
narratives) and were part of READCO’s
ongoing interest in developing performance
improvisation skills.
“The cast all produce very strong
characterisations… the rough hewn style
and structure is really funny, fresh and
original.”
EVENING HERALD
“Taking hints on characterisation from the
audience… these talented performers… are
clearly having a ball.”
THE IRISH TIMES

26. Saint Aguna’s
Bewleys Café Theatre
READCO
2000

27. Saint Aguna’s
St. Aguna’s was performed at Bewley’s Café Theatre in February 2000 and ran for three
weeks, with a rotating cast of thirteen and a constantly changing show. The piece was
created by the artistic team and performers and was the company’s first experiment in
performance improvisation, leading to the development of further improvisation-based
work including Human Stories 1-6 and Living Space.
“The cast double-jobbing as nuns and villagers perform with gusto… priceless.”
DUBLIN EVENT GUIDE
“A plucky adventure in improvised comedy.”
SUNDAY TRIBUNE
“St. Aguna’s is a brave, madcap concept… with enough highlights, energy and innovation
to make me take the company up on their challenge and go again.”
SUNDAY BUSINESS POST
“The co-ordination is so good that there is a suspicion of miracles about it… very funny
and original.”
THE IRISH TIMES

28. Natalie Stringer & Ciaran McMahon in
Romantic Friction
READCO
1997 - 1999

29. Romantic Friction
By Michelle Read.
Andrews Lane Theatre, Dublin, Edinburgh Festival (Fringe First winner) and Irish
tour 1998, Tristan Bates Theatre, London 1999
Tristan Bates Theatre, London, 1999
“an irresistible riot of warmth, wit and skill”
Time Out
Edinburgh Fringe & Irish Tour, 1998
“...one of the finest and funniest plays of the Festival....sharply written and hugely entertaining...”
The Scotsman
“Fast, furious and humorous the show is a delightful trawl through pulp fiction.”
The Irish Times
Dublin Fringe Festival production, 1997
“Superb acting and direction showcase Read’s play to brilliant effect”
Hot Press, Dublin
“A rollicking parody of bodice-ripping pulp novels.”
The Sunday Times
“...one of the most pleasurable pieces I’ve seen.”
Evening Herald, Dublin

30. The Lost Letters Of A
Victorian Lady
by Michelle Read
Bewleys Café Theatre 1996
(Restaged by Bewleys 2004)

31. The Lost Letters Of A Victorian Lady – Reviews 2004
Bewleys Café Theatre, Dublin, 2004
“an unashamed romp; it also has a strong satiric edge… very funny
and clever.”
The Sunday Independent
“Sharp, pacey comedy” “an endless flow of hilarity.”
The Irish Times
“Michelle Read proves her worth as a comic writer in this superbly
original romp… a blistering hour of comedy.”
The Sunday Tribune
“Clever and cheeky, the pen of Michelle Read has created a quirky
gem of a piece.
What’s On Where online listings and reviews

32. https://issuu.com/michelleread/
docs/romantic_friction___other_
plays_by_michelle_read/2