Stormy-The Opera

Kay Adshead is a poet, playwright, theatre maker, performer, and producer.
She trained at RADA as an actress, where she won the Emile Littler Award for Outstanding Talent. She has played leading roles in film, theatre and TV, including Cathy in the BBC classic series Wuthering Heights, Linda in Mike Leigh’s film Kiss of Death, as well as notable appearances in popular TV programs spanning 30 years. Theatre performances include Moll Gromer in Thee and Me at the RNT, Viola in Twelfth Night, Betty in Touched and singing the role of Clara Twain in White Suit Blues, at The Old Vic. She learnt to wrestle for the role of Tanzi in Trafford Tanzi at The Mermaid,
As a writer, she has been nominated 3 times for The Susan Smith Blackburn Award. She has written over 25 plays. She has been published by Methuen, Faber and Faber, and Oberon, with commissions and/or productions at The Royal National Theatre, The Royal Court, The Young Vic, The Roundhouse, The Tricycle, The Bush, Soho Theatre, The Cockpit, The Arcola, Theatre503, The Omnibus, and many more.
In 1999 with Lucinda Gane, she co-founded award-winning theatre company Mama Quilla, winning amongst other awards, Edinburgh Fringe First, Adelaide Fringe Sensation Award, Adelaide Best Fringe Performance Award, M.E.N. best Fringe Performance, nominated for an E.M.M.A and Encore Magazine Best Play of the Year. She has devised and directed more than 12 experimental and live art projects for Mama Quilla (many with casts of over 30) working in hard to reach communities, including maximum security prisons. In April 2019, Kay devised and directed Section 28 and The Queer State, produced by Jacksons Lane, Alexandra Palace, and Mama Quilla. It was performed as an epic promenade around The Alexandra Palace ending in the iconic Victorian Theatre. Kay is currently producing The Pangolin Project for Mama Quilla, a series of 60 second extreme close up films, provoked or inspired by the pandemic. It has attracted to date over 40,000 views.
Alex Sierz of The Tribune describes her as ”the great survivor” and The Times reviewed her play I am Sad you are dead Mrs. T as “a poetic mortar bomb." Her new (American white privilege play) Entering Incomplete Map Data was presented as a staged reading with esteemed activist group #Sayhername as guests in the audience. In February 2019, The Last Little Girl tackling sex trafficking was performed at MATCH Houston Texas, and Kay was awarded a Purposeful Artist Award. A tour of Stormy-The Opera funded by Houston Arts Alliance was cancelled due to Covid19 restrictions and was reimagined as a bricolage, with a premiere production live streaming on YouTube in October 2020.
Her second short film The Driflin' (before COVID19 ) was scheduled to be shot on the Bolivar Peninsula, Texas, in 2021 for Stingaree Productions. Her short film, Prelude, shot in 2020 (set in the days before the 2016 election) will be edited in 2021.