Kate Reid explores the untold stories of Northern Ireland.
The actor, writer and co-artistic director of Plain Heroines has a show and a sitcom pilot in the pipeline.
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When Kate Reid – actor, writer, and co-artistic director of female-led theatre company Plain Heroines – was a student at Cambridge, she became frustrated at how the university’s drama scene was hegemonized by men.
“It seemed to me that student drama, and particularly the writing side of it, was dominated by a load of boys,” Reid says. “A friend and I both wanted to put shows on, too, but it felt like a closed door.”
Reid and her friend, the actor and writer Aoife Kennan, decided to do something about it. Together with director Gabriella Bird, they formed a company and staged two plays – one by Reid, one by Kennan – first in Cambridge, then at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2016. Almost the entire crew, creative team, and cast were women.
“We had one guy in the cast, who we referred to as our ‘token Guy’, because his name actually was Guy,” says Reid. “That was the first Plain Heroines production. I don’t think we ever considered that it would go on to become a real company. We just started it to have some fun, and to evolve the representation of our university drama scene.”
Plain Heroines lay dormant for several years after Reid graduated and spent two years training as an actor at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. It was there that Reid wrote the ten-minute scene that would evolve into her second play, A Girl, Standing, which was staged at Theatre503 in May 2019 after an open call for script submissions.
“Up until that point, I had real imposter syndrome,” Reid says. “Having that show staged at Theatre503 was a real boost of confidence, though. I thought: ‘Okay, other people trust my scripts. Maybe I should start trusting them, too.’”
“There’s an English perspective that Northern Ireland is either bombs or leprechauns with nothing in between…”
Born in 1994, Reid grew up in London. She always knew she wanted to act professionally but writing only came at Cambridge, through “silly sketches” with her comedy partner Zak Ghazi-Torbati, and those early outings of Plain Heroines. After A Girl, Standing¸ though, she started taking her scripts more seriously, staging scenes and snippets at scratch nights all over London. Slowly, she says, some themes started to emerge in her work: queerness, female stories, and, above all, Northern Ireland.
“I’m half Northern Irish on my mam’s side, and I spend a lot of time at my grandparents in County Tyrone,” says Reid. “Things were so insane and intense, socially and politically, over there in 2019, when I started really writing. Every time I sat down to write something new for a scratch night, it seemed like the obvious thing to write about.”
Plain Heroines – Reid, Kennan, Bird, plus producer Ellie Fitz-Gerald – reformed in late 2019, earned a spot on the Park Theatre’s Script Accelerator programme, and decided to stage a new play at Vault Festival in 2020. Written by Reid, The 4th Country wove the recent upheaval in Northern Ireland – the post-Brexit spike in sectarian violence, the collapse of power sharing at Stormont, the decriminalisation of abortion – into a powerfully personal and political story.
“One of the main issues I wanted to address was the question of who gets to tell Northern Irish stories, and what those stories look like,” says Reid. “There’s an English perspective that Northern Ireland is either bombs or leprechauns with nothing in between, but there is a vast and diverse array of Northern Irish stories that are rarely seen on stage or in the news. We were adamant we wanted to represent that.”
The 4th Country’s successful run at Vault Festival earned it a transfer to the Park Theatre, originally scheduled for the summer of 2020, but pushed back by the pandemic to this January. An extended 80-minute production of the play opens in the Finsbury Park venue’s studio space next week.
The postponement was a blow, but Plain Heroines survived the sixteen-month delay, and Reid used the time to focus on other work, joining Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab and developing an original sitcom script with her university comedy partner Ghazi-Torbati. Entitled The Other Half, it recently reached the final four of Triforce Creative Network’s WriterSlam competition. A pilot, made by Romesh Ranganathan’s production company, will air on Dave later this year.
“Zac is half Iranian and half Welsh and gay, and he moved in with my family when he first came to London to try and make it in the arts,” Reid explains. “The Other Half is basically a heightened version of that situation. We were both raised on Monty Python, so there is definitely an absurdist streak to it. Omid Djalili and Schitt’s Creek are big reference points as well.”
A play being produced, and a sitcom pilot in the pipeline. The combination of theatre and television work means that, for the first time, Reid does not have to rely on a non-theatrical job to support herself. It means she is able to write “full steam ahead, without any distractions, which is amazing.” It also means she is extremely busy.
“I’ve got a deadline for a draft of the sitcom pilot script on Monday,” she says. “I’ve got a deadline for the Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab on Monday, too. And we are about to open The 4th Country. Things are pretty hectic right now.”
What do you want to do?
The dream is to do writing and acting in a combination of theatre and television. Theatre will always be my first love and my creative home, but lately I have really loved learning to write for television as well. In five years’ time, I would like to still be working in both, making stuff that makes people laugh and think a little bit, too.
What support do you need to get there?
If anyone is feeling in a giving spirit, they can donate to Plain Heroines via our website. People can book tickets to come see The 4th Country through the Park Theatre website, too. They can come and have a laugh, have a cry, and have a drink with us all afterwards, then go home and Google Northern Ireland.
They can watch The Other Half pilot when it is broadcast on Dave later this year, too. And tweet at UKTV telling them how fantastic it is.
How can people find out more about you?
In terms of my inspirations, I love anything Duncan Macmillan touches. I love Lucy Prebble and Lucy Kirkwood, too. In terms of me, people can find out more on my website, and on the Plain Heroines website, or they can follow me on Twitter.
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Fergus Morgan