by Peter Oswald
Based on To Cause a Death, the autobiography by Kelly Connor
Directed by Tim Carroll
Presented by TaurusVoice as part of the poetryatthefinborough series

A script-in-hand performance of a newly commissioned play by the Finborough Theatre’s new Playwright-in-Residence

[ spring season 2007 ]
Sunday, 27 May and Sunday, 3 June 2007

In 1971, seventeen year old Kelly Connor knocked down and killed an elderly pedestrian…

In her painful quest to understand and take responsibility for having taken a life, Kelly Connor’s conscience leads her into unknown regions of the soul where a battle takes place between herself and hosts of angels and demons in an inner court case where she is both judge and defendant. This remarkable new play chronicles the true story of a modern woman’s unrelenting search for the truth.

The Trial of Kelly Connor combines the themes of mental health, life and death, spirituality and conscience in a true story that is at the same time universal and personal. Since Kelly Connor’s accident in 1971, there have been 53,000 pedestrian deaths in the UK.

Director Tim Carroll is Associate Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, where he has directed Peter Oswald’s Augustine’s Oak,The Two Noble Kinsmen, Macbeth, and The Storm. Other shows include Twelfth Night (winner of Evening Standard, Time Out, Critics’ Circle and Olivier Awards), Richard II (winner Jujamcyn Award), Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest. He also has an increasingly prominent career as an opera director, with productions of Tosca for English Touring Opera, Manon Lescaut for Opera Holland Park, London, The Turn of the Screw for Opera Oviedo, Spain, and The Abduction from the Seraglio for the Csokonai Theatre in Hungary.

Playwright Peter Oswald has had two plays produced at the National, two world premieres at Shakespeare’s Globe and several translations staged including Lorca’s Dona Rosita at the Almeida. His adaptation of Schiller’s Mary Stuart, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, completed a hugely successful four-month run in the West End last year. He has been Writer in Residence at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and is described by Theatre Record as “Our most surprising and inventive playwright”. He is the newly-appointed Playwright-in-Residence at the Finborough Theatre.

Award-winning theatre company TaurusVoice create productions with a strong physical, ensemble style and innovative use of the voice. The company has developed unmatched skills in speech chorus, using multi-layered voices to create extraordinary power and dynamic. www.taurusvoice.co.uk

The Press on TaurusVoice
“Sometimes a production emerges, follows you home and lingers on the ether for years. This important piece could be one of those” The Stage
**** “Beautifully stylised and executed…excellent” The Herald, Edinburgh
”TaurusVoice draw you wholeheartedly into their magical world… The Snow Queen cast her spell over the audience both young and old, leaving us both thoroughly entertained and surprisingly moved” Latest 7, Brighton