ABOUT SKYE LONERAGAN

Passionate about curiosity as a kind of currency, both in terms of value and exchange, Skye Loneragan is an award-winning writer/performer whose work spans theatre, poetry and live art.

Her first solo work Cracked, (directed by Zinnie Harris), won an Edinburgh Fringe First. She has written and performed seven solo shows.  Her most recent, Though This Be Madness, premiered in 2018 with SMHAF and, following a Covid-19 hiatus, toured Scotland –  thanks to support from Creative Scotland. During the pandemic, the play became a digital iteration: Though This Be (online) Madness!!!! Solo pieces include The Line We Draw (what is the line we draw between ages and artforms?), This Impossible Rim (as Wigtown Book Festival’s 2016 writer-in-residence), Unsex Me Here (‘What has the Raised Calf got to do with getting somewhere?’ ) & Plucked of Purpose – the Adventures of PB (‘how does our striving to fulfill ourselves link to landfill?’). She just finished writing the draft of her new play, May Contain Nuts (*), working with the SMHAF and Robert Softley Gale on its development. May Contain Nuts (*) is born of the time Skye had to see a psychiatrist to prove to a BBC commissioning editor that my father’s schizophrenia, which she had fictionalised in a play, was considered realistic. At the time, the editor had described the inclusion of this particular mental illness as a ‘hot potato’. May Contain Nuts (*) opens with a play-long content warning and questions what drives a need to verify fictional depictions of mental illness as ‘true’, and who gets to decide.

Other plays include The Turmeric Trail, written as Accelerator artist for Imaginate, shared with audiences in development at The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. As Artistic Director for Toonspeak Young Peoples Theatre, Skye directed the Creative Scotland-funded, site-specific young-artist led works, ‘Lost & Found’ (Whisky Bond) and ‘Seven Signs’ (Merchant City, Glasgow) – devising with a cast of more than 30, 11-25yr olds and created the spoken word project,Word of Mouth which focuses on young writer/performers. Devised work includes directing Ignite Theatre’s Under Pressure with children of refugees, with Edinburgh’s Whale Arts and A Little Laugh I Lost Somewhere (Arches Theatre Young Directors Award). Collaborations include the on-going exploration, Skye & Skye on Skye with dancer Skye Reynolds which questions what really is in a name.

Skye is Lead Artist and creator of the public art engagement strategy, ‘Q-POETICS‘, (poetry in queues), which premiered at the Sydney Writers Festival 2013, opened the Kelpies, was part of Cultural Programme for Commonwealth Games, Festival 2014. Q-poetics worked with Wigtown Book Festival to connect residents of Dumfries & Galloway through the bus tour for Spring Fling 2016. Q-poetics emerged from the public art engagement strategy, Making a Map of My Mistakes – working in places/spaces of waiting and with the New Victoria Hospital Glasgow.

Recipient of a New Writers Award for the children’s play, How It Became The Talking Stick, and FST bursary for her research into writing for performance, Skye’s residencies have included Playwright in Residence for Visible Fictions Theatre Co, out of which came the play for young people, Mish Gorecki Goes Missing (Tron Theatre), shortlisted for three UK awards. Touring her performance poetry, she’s featured poet with the Sydney Morning Herald online app & Sydney Poetry Prize winner 2012. Her poem Glasgow (We’ve All Been Here Before) was commissioned for theatre, Whatever Gets You Through the Night (directed by Cora Bissett). Poetry publications include contributions Buying Into The Property Market (GRIST Anthology UK, editor Simon Armitage) and The Grin Of Our Choices, (Abridged Magazine, UK).

She works extensively as an artist-in-residence with a diverse range of community groups and organisations, most recently working as Artist-in-Residence for the Covid memorial project, Remembering Together, as the Edinburgh Lead artist. This work culminated in a Covid memorial art trail at Wardie Bay, Edinburgh, which includes her poetry and collaborative co-creations.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

“Loneragan is such a gifted and engaging performer, both in words and movement, that the quiet integrity of her unadorned staging finally comes to seem like a gift; in a show that talks of madness, but also of how women’s lives, honestly described, always tend to defy the norms of our culture – including our ideas of sanity and exactly what it might look like.”
– Joyce McMillan, Scotsman, THOUGH THIS BE MADNESS 2018

“…this has power…deeply affecting humour and the frustrations of Loneragan are heartfelt and deeply appreciated…a very good conceit … seeing anxieties performed as characters would be marvellous and take us from the realms of a Wonderful World of Dissocia to a new level of understanding. And that is exactly what revolutionary thought should begin with…” Donald Stewart, FringeReview, SMHAF work in progress sharing, MAY CONTAIN NUTS (*)

“In a kind of acute free verse rendering that might’ve come from Shakespeare were he alive today and on uppers, Loneragan poses provocative questions with the most vigorous, surefooted delivery imaginable.”
– Crickey, THE LINE WE DRAW

“It takes an artist of some budding genius to generate an idea this simple and this brilliant.”
– Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman, UNSEX ME HERE

“…a colourful litany of love lost and found and the comforts of madness in the face off an all too serious big, bad world of adulthood. ….take your time to be small is Loneragan’s overriding instruction…”
– The Herald, Neil Cooper, THE LINE WE DRAW

“…no one notices that Mish Gorecki has actually gone missing. No laughing matter, and yet writer Skye Loneragan contrives, without being facile, to flip the potentially grim scenario of Mish’s messy existence into something genuinely life-affirming and hilarious to boot”
– Mary Brennan, The Herald, MISH GORECKI GOES MISSING

“A tiny, but almost perfect show….a haunting reminder of some of the big questions asked.”
– Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman, CRACKED.

For more reviews, please click here.

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