Minor Disruptions [By Katie Paterson] 2.jpg

Performance

My work spans cabaret, comedy, theatre and live art. I have shared material at the Barbican, Pleasance, Theatre503, Museum of Comedy, VAULT Festival, Cockpit Theatre, Theatre Deli, Camden People's Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe, Q Theatre Auckland, Waitress and Maiden Speech Festivals and in warehouses and pubs all over London.

Credits include feature films Finding Altamira (dir. Hugh Hudson), Birds Like Us (Faruk Šabanović); short films Part Machine (Josh Brandao), A Bed for Me (Shakespeare Sisters), Home from Home (Olivia Hetreed), Calm, Ordinary (Claudia Paterson); mezzo-soprano soloist for Forbear! Theatre (Theatre Royal Harrogate, Buxton Opera House, Ettington Park Opera) and The Willmore Singers (Bristol Shakespeare Festival, Putney Methodist Church); site-specific work in Wollstonecraft, Live! (Anna Birch), Aida and Steve (ŠITE Productions), and Breeding Other Bodies (Eliza Brady).

I am currently developing a new show, Second Drink Sensation, using drinking songs to explore ADHD women's relationships with alcohol, and continue to support other artists as a dramaturg and reader.

Katie, in a white slip, leans over an illuminated test tube.

Side FX

VAULT Festival
Camden People's Theatre
Theatre Deli

Join Katie for a camp, chaotic cabaret about the Pill. And Vampires.

When it comes to contraception, things are better than they were – but isn't that a low bar?

With musical comedy, poetry, games and sci-fi, your doctor awaits you. Exploring all things hormonal, from the delightful to the unexpectedly dark, this is PhD research as you’ve never seen it before – drawing on interviews, autobiography, archival research and a teenage Twilight obsession. Be prepared for audience participation, bingo, lollipops and country singing.*

*Side Effects may include laughter, rage, and an aversion to ketchup.

R&D support from the Barbican, Camden People's Theatre and Theatre Deli enabled the development of this piece in addition to the Guildhall Arts and Health Studentship.

First Bite

Barbican

A patient speaks beneath a fog-brained visor. A doctor asks questions with no way of hearing the answer. A woman speaks in borrowed voices while she strips. A ukulele is played, poorly, to an empty room. Eartha Kitt wants to be evil. Someone's boyfriend wants them to stop crying. Edward Cullen watches without a word.

Recorded at the Pit theatre in lockdown under strict social distancing, First Bite used verbatim and comedy to analyse interviews about the contraceptive pill.

A woman waves her arms and hair wildly, in green lighting.

Katie in a pink dressing gown, watched by a cardboard Edward Cullen

Edith

The Big Share

Edith is a play about home, truth and unrequited love. The arrival of an elderly woman facing death upends the lives of the young people living in her former home. This show is partly the result of research into the activities of undercover police officers.

A Zoom performance of Edith was produced by Mrs C's Collective during lockdown, supporting Katie's development as part of their writer's group.

Game Face

Auckland Fringe

A collaboration with Lexi Clare and Lucy Park, Game Face is a gig-theatre show that explores beauty myths, bodies and shame through song, dance and play.

Following work-in-progress shows at Maiden Speech Festival in 2019 it toured to New Zealand for the Auckland Fringe Festival, with a run at Q Theatre. Planned shows at the Camden People's Theatre and Assembly Venues were cancelled due to Covid-19.

A woman relaxing, wearing novelty Donut glasses and a t-shirt with a photo of a bikini

A poster for Game Face, three women holding donuts and looking worried on a blue background

All three are talented singers. Even when at its heaviest, the performers approach their own personal pain with a joyful charm.

Ethan Sills, NZ Herald

Three powerhouses guided the audience through this tumultuous, relatable and gasp-inducing narrative.

Steph Hartland, Medium

Katie mid-jump with a skipping rope and a whistle round her neck

Minor Disruptions is an absurd deconstruction of the queerness of childhood which featured dead hamsters, a drag tribute to Miss Trunchbull and a total failure to learn to juggle, despite the best efforts of many kind audience members.

Katie in a white tutu, looking at a teddy bear she holds upside down

Minor Disruptions

Theatre503
Edinburgh Fringe

She entertains and moves us at the same time. If you want to have your spirits lifted, I recommend you spend half an hour with Katie Paterson!

London Pub Theatres

✭✭✭✭

Adopting an almost music hall-style persona, a series of sketches guide us through a complex portrait of childhood which, she argues, can be as emotionally challenging a time as any, especially for a queer kid (or a hamster…).

There Ought To Be Clowns

Skills in improvisation that match those of a stand-up comic.

Spy In The Stalls