British Nominated
Playwright
Best New Play – Brighton Fringe
Katie Reddin-Clancy - Ambitious Writer with a Unique Voice.
Reddin-Clancy…solid comedy chops.
Beautiful…haunting and poetic…Deliciously observed character comedy. Mesmerising and witty piece of comedy theatre.
Katie’s razor sharp…barbed tongue and her skill as a comedian. Katie is a skilled performer with fantastic delivery – I look forward to seeing her shine.
Live Shows
New Writing In Development from Emerging Writer
Katie’s goal as a new writer is: she wants to tell herself the best story ever!
A story that she’d like to hear, now. She wants to imagine a show that blows her mind, then write it down and share it with you. That’s her plan…with the hope that it resonates with you too!
Currently, Katie is writing her third solo shows and her first television pilot for a series.
Theatre
EDUCATION WE DIDN’T HAVE is Katie’s latest play.
It’s a solo theatre, multimedia, comedy, cabaret, spoken word show.
A resting performer approaches a birthday and hits existential crisis mode. She’s 33…plus VAT. Until further notice. Electra attempts “normal life” and happiness but finds herself in competition with her best friend, a millennial assistant and at a clowning retreat. How did she end up here? A card game. A timely, metatheatrical story about purpose, creativity, education, privilege, love, advertising and the rise of automation.
A one woman show exploring: why didn’t we learn this at school?
The feedback so far is that it’s: evocative, thought-provoking writing. Which certainly reflects Katie’s writing journey with it pre and during lockdown! Katie is continuing her investigation of how to explore the world of a story and how to mesh dramatic styles and forms in a show.
Here’s a spoken word extract:
Television
Telling stories is a huge passion for Katie.
She’s very excited to be working on her first comedy drama pilot for a television series. She was really inspired when supporting the development of slates from scripts into production for television, comedy and entertainment companies: Twelve Town (Pinewood Television) and So Television. She also really enjoyed scouting new writers and comedians and seeing how they developed their shows from new acts thinking about a first Edinburgh to the juggernaut of The Graham Norton Show.
Documentary
Katie is currently working on a multiplatform documentary / entertainment programme.
It will hopefully raise awareness and help change the alarming rate of animal extinction.
Writing Credits
A remarkable, versatile talent who sets a very high bar indeed.
Katie has written two solo theatre, character comedy shows that she’s performed and taken to Fringe Festivals. An amazing learning curve.
She’s very grateful to her directors / dramaturgs for guiding her: Sarah McCusker, Logan Murray, Colin Watkeys and Peter Blackburn. She’s also indebted to the incredible performers who’ve inspired and entertained her with their work.
Her second show GRACE (2018) was shortlisted for BEST NEW PLAY at Brighton Fringe. It was a character comedy, cabaret, stand up and theatre piece about: Alfie, a comedian who performed as the male half of a double act re-enters the stage… as Zora, a woman.
GRACE toured: Tuxedo Cat (Adelaide Fringe Festival), The Butterfly Club (Melbourne International Comedy Festival), The Theatre Box / The Warren (Brighton Fringe Festival) and The Gilded Balloon (Edinburgh Fringe Festival).
Sponsored by Isobel advertising agency and winner of an Encore insurance bursary.
KATE MIDDLETON SHOW QUEEN was Katie’s debut show and toured Adelaide Fringe and Melbourne Comedy Festival.
Sponsored by Bank SA, Bouffant Delacroix salon, Ms Caramel Cakes, M.C Lange Solicitors and Gritti Palace Hairdresser.
Director Testimonial
Katie Reddin-Clancy is quite simply one of the hardest-working and most tenaciously determined artists I have met and had the privilege to work with on a number of occasions. She is unrelenting in her self-discipline and ability to take on complex notes and dramaturgic concepts that would render a lesser artist catatonic in her stride – or, if she feels she must fight for her choices she does so with professionalism and respect.
Her artistic sensibilities are wide and often surprising, citing Brecht one moment and Bronksi Beat the next, all in service of the content and context of the personal journey she is sharing.
Her work – sometimes to her chagrin – has often been compared to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and it took me a while to realise the umbrage taken was not the flattery of the comparison. It was that they come from dramatically different perspectives but both are generously open about the personal investment in their work. Blood, tears and dreams are on her work, I have never doubted.
I love working with Katie, and know we shall do so many more times. She is a disciplined and elegant writer, a unanimously praised versatile actress and a good human. She has my validation on any project one is lucky enough to have her on. She will always go above and beyond.
Solo Show Reviews
GRACE
“Her brilliance shines in the details… The writing was clever, authentic and witty.” The Advertiser
“An important statement about gender fluidity …Grace is a brave work…a powerful and provocative piece of theatre.” Broadway Baby
“A journey of gender, life and love. Grace…impressively weaving between genders and characters…The quick, sarcastic gags and sharp dialogue was well written and Reddin-Clancy did a brilliant job.” Ed Fest Mag
“The fringe is perfect for performances like Grace…full of fascinating contradictions…about the drag and theatre industries.” Three Weeks
“Grace is topical, diverse… an excellent independent Fringe show.” Adelaide Theatre Guide
“It’s delivered via some fine writing, punchy one-liners…Experience and intelligence show: her delivery is confident, clear and assured. It is a pleasure to watch her, to be beguiled by her characters and to be left with plenty to think about.” Stage Whispers
KATE MIDDLETON SHOW QUEEN
“Darn good writing throughout…great insights into life, smashing one-liners plus Reddin-Clancy is a quality performer.” Adelaide Theatre Guide
“Kate Middleton Show Queen is a bittersweet show about finding one’s place in life. It is also a display of talent, wit, fantastic delivery and zeal!” Fringereview.co.uk
“Reddin-Clancy combines humor, wit and intriguing storytelling with a raw performance…” Fringe Benefits
Stand Up Comedy
The strength of this show is Katie’s razor sharp, barbed tongue and her skill as a comedian.
Writing stand-up comedy encouraged three things in Katie – vulnerability, honesty and facing her fear. She finds it incredibly rewarding and fun – when it goes right and it flexes the… resilience muscles when it’s a joke in progress! Her first stand up gig was headlining ‘The Last Laugh Comedy Club’ at The Athenaeum to 200 people in 2013 in Melbourne, Australia. That got the adrenaline going!
Returning to London, Katie learned a lot by watching fellow comedians and working on the London stand-up circuit. In her first year, she won her London heat and performed in the semi-finals of the ‘So You Think You’re Funny’ competition for new acts at The Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh Fringe, 2014. She plays various clubs such as The Camden Head, Up The Creek and The Cavendish Arms.
Radio
150,000 downloads in a month was a lot in 2007!
Katie was originally a journalist for her other passion – dance music.
She co presented and produced a radio show THE MENU SESSIONS with Jay Cunning and Atomic Hooligan which was nominated for BEST RADIO SHOW at Breakspoll.
She also reported from backstage at Glastonbury for their radio station GFM and wrote for Mofo magazine.
So much fun.
Corporate
Executed ambitious PR marketing campaigns with her writing – usually going beyond the brief by bringing new opportunities to the table. Katie helps us power up. She is a joy to work with. A great sense of humour, terrific wing-man, proactive and hard-working. I trust her implicitly.
Katie really enjoyed putting her writing and performance technique into practise and working as a pitching mentor.
She ran a workshop for 85 people for Design Council Spark and the Knee High Design Challenge in content, structure and delivery of pitches for live audiences and in front of camera.
Katie has also worked as a corporate writer producing: speeches, interviews and presentations for marketing companies.
She researched and wrote content for The Oystercatchers Club – members are CMOs of brands and CEOs of marketing agencies. She also wrote content for The Festival of Marketing, interviews for ten panel discussions and a main stage interview with Dame Carolyn McCall, CEO of ITV.
Blog
Just A Work In Progress
Just build a home studio.
Just write for theatre… in lockdown.
Just design and write a website.
Just fight to be yourself – An Abi Jay tribute.
Just play “Larry Moss Says”!
Writing Style
Imaginative, stylistically innovative and interesting stories – very funny.
Katie’s been noticed for her excellent comic observation, particularly ‘English’ awkwardness. Her plays have huge scope and ambition. She likes to feel out of her depth although it’s scary.
Her writing moves between the colloquial and the poetic. There’s a real sense of flair and richness of language.
There’s a language and theatricality of performance only available to the medium of theatre. To Katie it’s a fascination. Her logical brain knows it’s not real… yet she’s 100% in. She’s a believer.
Writing Passion
You couldn’t possibly walk out the theatre the same person who walked in and that’s the magic for me.
Theatre is a fascinating art form. Katie’s transfixed by the fact we watch creativity, choices, heightened human nature… live.
She loves how it’s open to change and interpretation each night by the actors and audience.
There’s a laser focus on humanity that only comes from sitting in silence with others in the dark, phones off (for our only tech detox we allow ourselves), watching people in situations they would never show “the public”. Such a gift.
No pause button or rewind while we try and keep up, piece together the story, work out who’s telling the truth and how it’s going to end, especially if working with dramatic irony. Watching what’s on stage in tandem with making sense of our own worlds.
Writing is an incredible process. Learning more and more about human behaviour and relationships to reproduce them authentically.
Katie loves how artists challenge the way we see the world and take us to new places – perhaps starting with the workings of our own mind.
After some shows, audience members remarked to Katie how they had been moved by the stories they told. She had raised ideas and storylines which made them feel seen. She’ll never forget that feeling, having some sort of positive impact, particularly as typically it was something she and her team felt vulnerable about themselves.
Katie was once told by a psychic that it was important she wrote for her own and the healing of others. The psychic didn’t have her surname so couldn’t have googled her to see she’s a writer. She often thinks of that when she’s facing the blank page!
Writing Journey
A Writer’s Journey starts with a…good few false starts? At least one abandoned script? Plenty more disregarded ideas and quite a few career cul du sacs and industry tangents? Katie’s did.
At first Katie thought she wanted to write a novel. So she travelled to Crete and did a dream writing course to understand character and explore the subconscious – absolutely fascinating. However at 23, she couldn’t connect her thoughts coherently to make it into anything!
Then she explored film on courses with Robert McKee’s – Story and Screen writing at Arvon retreats with Patrick Marber which were incredibly insightful and fun.
She fell in love with theatre first however and wanted to write a play. Maybe it could be a solo theatre piece that she could perform, she thought, as that would fuse her love of theatre and comedy. However, Katie felt that if she was to take such a big leap …and complete it, she needed focus, time and support. So she moved to Melbourne, moved in with friends, plugged herself into 16th Street Acting studio and studied as an actress with the likes of Larry Moss – the guru by day. By night, she worked behind the bar of a cabaret,
burlesque, circus, comedy club: Red Bennies. That was an education in itself! Australia has such talent.
Katie also studied Comedy at RMIT University in Melbourne with Tim Ferguson and a few years later explored Clowning in a ten day retreat with Dr Brown in Wales. Both pretty legendary experiences.
In 2019 Katie spent six months in The National Theatre’s Playwriting group and started her third show. Then she worked with Bryony Kimmings honing the autobiographical element…and came up with a different show – her fourth?!
Previously, Katie studied theatre as an actress in 2005 at the Atlantic Theatre Company in New York – David Mamet’s theatre company – incredible. She misses New York!
Contact Katie
Feel free to get in touch to discuss your project or send me a script to read.
Voiceovers: I can work in a Covid Safe environment thanks to my broadcast quality StudioBricks home studio. I have gold standard industry equipment and can connect via Source Connect Standard. For more info, please click here on Voiceover Studio and Book. I can turn quality projects around for you quickly.
Acting: Available for new play read throughs and new writing workshops.
I look forward to creating work we’re both proud of and telling important stories.
Stay safe, Thanks, Katie.
