Charlotte Keatley – författare

'In its revelation of mother-daughter emotions over the years, the play is without rivals. It is a classic' The Times 'This is a landmark play. The theatrical equivalent of breaking the four-minute mile; like Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, pointing the way for the next generation of playwrights in form and content' Guardian Charlotte Keatley's first main stage play My Mother Said I Never Should was premiered in 1987 at Contact, Manchester, and in 1989 at the Royal Court Theatre, London. It has been translated into twenty-two languages and is performed across the world. The play moves back and forth through the lives of four women, and sets the enormous social changes of the twentieth century against the desire to love and to be loved. In 2000 it was chosen by the Royal National Theatre as one of the hundred Significant Plays of the Twentieth Century. Commentary and notes by Charlotte Keatley.

I don’t know if you’ll ever love me as much as I love you, but one day you’ll understand why I’ve done this to you.Doris, born illegitimate in 1900, exchanges her budding teaching career for marriage and motherhood. When the war is over, her daughter Margaret marries an American and has Jackie, who becomes an archetypal 60s rebel. When Jackie can’t face being a single mother, it is decided that baby Rosie will be brought up as Margaret’s own. That’s the plan anyway . . . Charlotte Keatley’s award-winning play is a moving exploration of the relationships between mothers and daughters, and the consequences of breaking the most sacred taboo of motherhood. My Mother Said I Never Should is about the choices we make which determine the course of our lives and how it is never too late to change.This edition was published to coincide with the revival of the play at the St James Theatre, London, in 2016, starring Maureen Lipman and Katie Brayben.

This warm and gripping story of fear and forgiveness is the first major play in twenty years from Charlotte Keatley, the award-winning author of My Mother Said I Never Should. This beautifully immersive and yet also elusive new play is a subtle and compassionate piece, with real humanity of characterisation and a firmly-evoked sense of place.A young woman on the eve of her 30th birthday returns to her parents' home in the sweeping hills of the Peak District. But the house is full of memories, and down by the reservoir she hears a voice from a drowned village. In time, every secret must come to the surface.Keatley's atmospheric writing creates a palimpsest of the past which cleverly yet evocatively leaks into the present. She presents a clear continuity of wrongs repeating themselves and the damage they wreak lasting across centuries and generations. An impressively accomplished piece, Our Father's sustained atmosphere and strong characterisation connects with Keatley's trademark dreamlike sequences which defy a linear chronological structure. Reflecting how the past continually interrupts the present, the time device is fundamental to the play's meaning as well as its psychological themes of guilt, evasions, resentments and eventual revelation of secrets.