Terry O’Donovan is the co-writer and director of Kiss Marry Kill, an electrifying and intimate story of love and redemption. Inspired by true events, this dramatic recreation from award-winning site-specific specialists Dante or Die, reimagines the first same sex marriage that took place in a UK prison.
Jay and Paul are both serving life sentences for homophobic murders. Incredibly, they fall in love and seek permission to marry.
Kiss Marry Kill zeroes in on the limits of our compassion, challenging our assumptions and preconceptions around sexuality, and the criminal justice system.
The production will tour to chapels across the UK and will premier in Kent in partnership with Ideas Test before opening to press at Stone Nest London on Thursday 18 April. It will then travel to Manchester, Reading and Norwich. Featuring a cast of three ex-prisoners, one of whom has experienced the prison system as a gay man, alongside live music performed by Rapper Lady Lykez, audiences will be invited into this intimate world of locked doors and secrets whilst sat on actual prison beds from Holloway prison.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
Kiss Marry Kill is heading out on tour, including a stop in London, what can you tell us about the show?
It’s a fascinating story inspired by the first same-sex marriage to take place in a UK prison. Our play is a fictionalised tale that centres on Jay and Paul. We see Jay commit a horrendous LGBTQ+ hate crime and follow him into his life in prison, where he meets Paul. Slowly, they start a hidden relationship, eventually asking to get married which has never happened in this – or any prison. So everybody is confounded by it.
The play is being performed in chapels and places where people get married – spaces that queer people are often excluded from. The entire set is built from real prison beds donated by HMP Holloway when it closed. You’ll feel very close up to the action as the cast will be on these beds all around you.
What inspired this new site-responsive play?
We started working on this project in 2016, having read an article about the first same-sex couple to get married in a UK prison. The complexities and complications of the men’s relationship – from separate homophobic murders to marrying each other – fascinated us.
The fact that the men were separated as a result of choosing to get married complicated the story even more for us. I married my husband in Belgium before same-sex marriage was legal in the UK, and I was really interested in the validation and safety that a marriage offered, and as we began our research everyone had a different opinion about the reasons for their wedding.
We decided to fictionalise it for a variety of reasons, most specifically out of respect for the victims’ families.
You worked with James Baldwin on the script, how did the collaboration work?
It’s been such a fruitful collaboration. James has worked in prisons for many years, developing drama and radio projects with prisoners. So, his insight and experience has been vital to the process. He’s a fantastic writer and the three of us have felt like we had a mini-writers room as we built the story. When we got to the writing process we had done so much research together that it really flowed.
Tell us a little about the cast, and why it was important to you to have ex-prisoners performing?
The applied theatre element to the project has been a real driving force in the creation and development of the show. We’ve had amazingly generous support from Geese Theatre and Clean Break, and a long-term collaboration with Synergy Theatre.
Synergy recruited nine ex-prisoners to take part in an research and development period with us in 2019. The room was explosive. The men’s opinions were divided and their experience hugely fed into both the script and the building of the project.
It was clear that we should create roles for people with prison experience in the production. We also felt it was important to build pathways into the arts through our next phase of development and so devised a theatre workshop programme at HMP Swaleside; and a 10 week Approaches to Theatre Making course for 15 Synergy members. The three ensemble cast members come from our work with Synergy – one from our recent course, and two from our 2019 research and development phase.
What has surprised you most working on this production?
It’s a really knotty story. Throughout the devising process we’ve had our opinions and prejudices challenged. We’ve oscillated between being on the side of the central characters and then being appalled and confused about the decisions being made. We had a script read recently and the room was intense. It’s going to divide opinion.
Working with the Synergy ensemble in 2019 was a revelation, and the dynamic responses of the men inspired story, script and lyrics. Going into prisons and discussing sexuality with staff has always been surprising – it’s a real taboo which feels at odds with the rest of society, but makes me realise how much prejudice and danger we still live in as a queer community. During the audition process we’ve had actors refuse to kiss other men in the production which blew my mind.
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see Kiss Marry Kill?
Experientially, it’s going to be pretty explosive. You’re definitely not going to nod off. There are moments of surreal ensemble sequences where you’ll be surrounded by men chanting, as well as very stark descriptions of violence. Spoken word is a really visceral element of the production. Our long-term composer Yaniv Fridel put us in touch with the inimitable Lady Lykez and we’re constantly bowled over by her lyrics, performance style and energy in the rehearsal room. And our cast is incredible. You need to see these guys do their thing.
