Lifestyle – A company formed in 1996 to give people with an intellectual disabilities a chance to perform on stage, has broken every mould. Blue Teapot’s stage and film productions have won acclaim and awards and it’s making history again with the debut play of member Charlene Kelly. JUDY MURPHY learns more.

When Blue Teapot Theatre Company was established in the mid-1990s it was as a community arts group, giving people with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities an opportunity to be involved in performance.

That’s still at the heart of what Blue Teapot does, but few could have realised then that this tiny group would grow to become such a force in Galway’s arts world. A professional company made up of people with intellectual disabilities (ID) it has broken new ground and won many awards for its theatre and film productions.

Now, after delays and disruption due to Covid, Blue Teapot is embarking on its latest show, a co-production with the Abbey Theatre, which will open in the city’s Black Box Theatre next month.

Once more, the company is celebrating a first, as Into the Dark Woods was written by one of its members, Charlene Kelly, a talented actress and now playwright, who has a mild learning disability, with epilepsy.

It’s an unusual fairy tale about a friendship that develops between two young people with intellectual disabilities as they journey through a dark wood, having left their respective homes. The Prince (Kieran Coppinger) is the oldest in his family and should be heir to the throne, but his father, the King, is reluctant to allow this because of his son’s disability. So, the distraught young man leaves the gilded cage of his childhood, where he has been protected and prevented from making his own decisions all his life. Sharon (Jenny Cox), meanwhile, has been raised by her grandmother, who taught her to be independent and encouraged her to explore the world beyond her home.

“One of the big questions this play asks is about having the right to make your own decisions – it’s an interrogation of the dialogue between able and non-disabled people,” says Blue Teapot director, Petal Pilley who is directing Into the Dark Woods.

It all began a few years ago when Charlene was one of several Teapots – as they call themselves – who expressed an interest in writing.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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