The Playwrights Database
JESSICA WALKER
Nationality: British
email: n/a Website: Click here
Literary Agent: damian@markkendallartists.com
Singer and writer Jessica Walker is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Her recent performing and creative projects have taken her from the Barbican to the Adelaide Festival to Brits off Broadway New York. Her 2017/18 projects include her play All I Want is One Night, originally produced by the Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester, with further performances at Wilton's Music Hall, the Hope Mill theatre Manchester and the Brits off Broadway Festival New York; a residency at Snape Maltings for Witches Three, her new music theatre piece currently in development with composer Kerry Andrew; the UK premiere of Sarah Kirkland Snider's song cycle Penelope with Psappha; a recording of WW1 songs for Enter the Peace Broker (Chrome Radio); her new CD All I Want is One Night - death and desire at the French cabaret (Chrome Media); cabaret appearances at Live at Zedel, Roman River festival, Hargrave festival, Nottingham Theatre Royal and the Machynlleth Festival. She will also be an artist in residence at the 2018 Lichfield Festival. 2016 projects included All I Want is One Night for the Royal Exchange Theatre and The Rattler for Mahogany Opera Group. 2015 included Mercy and Grand - the Tom Waits project at the Adelaide Festival with Gavin Bryars, Unborn in America, by Luke Styles and Peter Cant, at The Vaults Festival, further performances of Pat Kirkwood is Angry at the St James Theatre Studio, and the singer in Caryl Churchill's The Skriker with Royal Exchange Theatre and Manchester International Festival, recorded for BBC Radio 3. 2013/14 stage roles included Gwendolen in Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest (NI Opera), Nurse/ Harriet in Sunday in the Park with George (Theatre du Chatelet), Gloria, A Pig Tale, by HK Gruber with The Opera Group. Other roles include Gloria in Weill's One Touch of Venus (Opera North), The Little Arab in Martinu's Julietta (Opera North at the Ravenna Festival), Gigi in School for Lovers (Glyndebourne and Finnish National Opera), Peep Bo in The Mikado( Nationale Reis Opera, Holland), Ninfa in Monteverdi's Orfeo (Opera North), Tamiri in Mozart's Il Re Pastore (Musiektheater Transparant), Messenger and Proserpina in Orfeo (The Opera Group), and Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro (Stanley Hall). Since 2010 she has been touring The Girl I Left Behind Me, a solo piece devised by her and director Neil Bartlett, and commissioned by Opera North projects, to great critical acclaim. Performances have included a week's residency at the Barbican Pit, the Purcell Room, Howard Assembly Rooms, Sage Gateshead, Brighton Theatre Royal, Aldeburgh Festival, Coutts Arts Festival, the Frome Festival, Buxton Festival, Lowry Salford Quays and Norfolk and Norwich Festival. The piece enjoyed a 3 week sell-out run at the 2013 festival at the 59E59 theatre New York, was recently published as a play script by Oberon Press, and was released in 2014 as a CD on the Original Cast Recordings label. Her solo show, Pat Kirkwood is Angry, originally co-produced by Opera North, in association with Royal Exchange Theatre, began life at the Manchester Royal Exchange studio and the Howard Assembly Rooms in October 2012, and has toured ever since, with performances at the St James Theatre, London, the Grassington Festival, the Richard Burton Theatre, Cardiff and the main stage of the Royal Exchange. In June 2014 went to the Brits off Broadway festival for a three week run, in which it was Charles Isherwood's critics pick of the week in the New York Times. In May and June 2013 Her cabaret opera - An Eye for an Eye - written with composer David Knotts, premiered at both the Bath and St Magnus music festivals, to critical acclaim. Jessica's other recent concert engagements have included Love is a Drag at Grassington Festival, Peace Cabaret at Lichfield Festival.Brel, Brassens and Barbara at the Bath International Music Festival with Alasdair Nicolson. recitals at the Howard Assembly Rooms, Opera North - Recession Songs and Songs from the Left Bank - with accompanist Jim Holmes, Ligeti's Aventures - Nouvelles Aventures and the world premiere of Joanna Lee's song cycle, Elephant Woman, both with Psappha. She toured Mercy and Grand: the Tom Waits Project with Opera North throughout the UK and in Milan, a CD of which has been released on the Gavin Bryars label, GB. A CD from a previous concert tour of hers - A Quiet Girl: songs of love and other disasters - is available on the Avid label. Other recent projects have included Nerone in The Coronation of Poppea at the Kings Head, in a new version translated and directed by Mark Ravenhill, with jazz arrangements by Alex Silverman, a revival of Mercy and Grand at St George's Hall, Bristol and the Spitalfields Winter Festival, and the title role of Ziggy in Unborn in America, by Luke Styles and Peter Cant at the Tete a Tete festival, ROH2's Exposure and the Soho Theatre. As a performer/ deviser, Jessica recently completed a major collaboration - OPENCOV - between Opera North, Leeds University, Bregenz Festival and the Shanghai Theatre Academy, exploring links and differences between Chinese and Western operatic traditions, and culminating in workshop performances in Shanghai, Bregenz and Leeds. Jessica has recently been awarded her PhD with commendation from Leeds University, with the support of a bursary from the School of PCI. Her practice-led research explored 'The Singer-actor as Creator and Collaborator: a performer-led model for new music theatre works.' See the Dr Jessica Walker page on this website for more details.
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below is a list of Jessica Walker's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
All I Want is One Night Girl I Left Behind Me, The Not Such Quiet Girls Pat Kirkwood is AngryAll I Want is One Night
Synopsis:
In the heady atmosphere of 1930s Paris, cabaret sensation and sex symbol Suzy Solidor thrilled audiences. In her little club in the heart of Paris, people flocked to see and hear the woman who sang surrounded by her 225 portraits. Now entombed in her antiques shop in Haut de Cagnes she is being painted for a final time. During an increasingly whiskey-fuelled evening Suzy vividly remembers former glories. As past and present collide she encounters previous lovers, artists, and her absent father. Finally, as the last song plays out, she is forced to confront both the loss of her allure and her imminent demise.
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: - Female: 3 Other: -
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Top of PageGirl I Left Behind Me, The
. . . I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thinking; hang on a minute; I seem to have the knack of pleasing ladies. In trousers? With short hair? In public? Was that allowed? Indeed it was.' A cool and contemporary look at one of the most intriguing aspects of musical theatre just what is it that makes a woman in trousers so appealing? Accompanied by a piano, mezzo-soprano Jessica Walker dons a few well-chosen items of male attire, giving a supremely well-sung performance that conjures up an entire world, from the swaggering cross-dressers of the Victorian Music Hall to the ambiguous boy-heroes of Mozart and Strauss, to the back-room bulldykes of the Harlem Renaissance. Commissioned and produced by Opera North Projects with the Southbank Centre touring partner Welcome to Yorkshire. the Girl I Left Behind Me is a provocative, flirtatious, personal one woman-guide which deliciously recalls a forgotten chapter of female performance.
Notes:
written by Neil Bartlett, Jessica Walker
1st Produced:
Howard Assembly Room, Leeds
15 May 2010
Organisations:
Opera North
1st Published:
Music:
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Genre:
musical theatre
Parts:
Male: - Female: 1 Other: musician
Further Reference:
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Top of PageNot Such Quiet Girls
Synopsis:
Bringing together an all-female chorus of sung voices and three female actors, this new musical drama, weaves a moving narrative through staged scenes, film projections, music hall songs and forgotten rarities by early 20th century female composers, shining a light on some of the neglected women's voices from the Great War.
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music by Joseph Atkins
1st Produced:
Howard Assembly Room, Leeds
29 Nov 2018
Organisations:
Opera North
1st Published:
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Music:
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Genre:
musical
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PagePat Kirkwood is Angry
Synopsis:
The show re-imagines the life and songs of the woman who was born in Salford in 1921 and was named Britain's first wartime star at the age of only eighteen. She had shows written for her by Noel Coward and Cole Porter, was the highest paid entertainer in Britain in the 1940's, and made famous songs such as My Heart Belongs to Daddy and Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered. Recovering from a major nervous breakdown after her seven picture contract with MGM was cancelled after only one film, she rebuilt her career in Britain, first in variety, next becoming the first woman to have her own TV series on British television. But she soon became drawn into the scandal surrounding an alleged affair with HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, rumours of which were to haunt her right up to her death from Alzheimer's in an Ilkley nursing home, in 2007. In 2010, after the death of her fourth husband, Peter Knight, letters from the Duke himself, addressed to Kirkwood, came to light, settling the truth about the affair once and for all. . .
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Genre:
biographical play
Parts:
Male: - Female: 1 Other: -
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