Julie McNamara

Julie McNamara (born 26 March 1960) is a theatre director, playwright, producer, actor and poet. She is Artistic Director of touring theatre company Vital Xposure. Patron of disability arts organisation DaDaFest and a political activist for human rights and gender politics.

McNamara first performed as a backing singer in 1977 with punk band The Plague. That same year she was voted Actress of the Year in Merseyside Drama Festival.

She went on to work with Lowbrow Theatre, and the National Student Drama Festival at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She wrote and directed a trilogy: Venus and the Fly Trap, Cock and Bull Stories and Kill the Fatted Calf all produced in Nottingham 1981- 2. By 1987 she was working for socio-political company Banner Theatre touring the UK’s Trade Union clubs, factory floors and picket lines.

The majority of McNamara’s work is created to ensure access for Deaf and disabled people is aesthetically integrated within the performance. However, she feels this has not always been successful and there is still scope for new developments. In a 2010 interview with Disability Arts Online she clarified: “We still didn't get it right for everybody. Some people don't read British Sign Language, their first language may be English and we had requests for 'Stage text' which frankly I hate. I don't know what the solution is. I still need to explore possibilities, but I am more and more convinced that the 'access' should never get in the way of the aesthetics of the craft.”

Pig Tales, 2002. McNamara gained a commission through Ovalhouse and Jacksons Lane for the Xposure Festival of Disability Arts. She teamed up with Jessica Higgs, Director of In Tandem theatre company. Pig Tales is composed of five short vignettes based on the nursery rhyme ‘This little piggy went to market’. Pig, the central character, is a female child raised as a boy. Pig’s warring Liverpool Irish family are haunted by the rigid teachings of the Catholic church. Disappointed with their peers and dislocated from their roots, the family implodes. Pig reflects on the chaos and confusion of an adolescence set against the brutality of the Mental Health System. The production was chosen as 'Critics Choice' in The Times, touring both nationally and internationally.

Pig’s Sister, also written and performed by McNamara and directed by Jessica Higgs, was created in association with Theatre Workshop Scotland, launched at The Poor School in London before transferring to Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2005. Julie McNamara went on to direct the play herself, casting two men in the roles of Pig and Sissy. Pig was played by Adrian Wilkes and Sissy by Michael McNamara for DaDa Festival, Liverpool 2006.

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