Playwright explores 'gay voice' with script reading

British playwright Rory Kelly / Courtesy of Seoul Players

Seoul Players invites drama lovers to a rehearsed reading this weekend of "Acute Accent," a new play by written Rory Kelly, a British resident of Seoul.

"Acute Accent" tells the story of Hig and Rob, a gay couple living in the U.K. Hig is English, working as a professor of linguistics, while Rob is an unemployed American actor. The day after they get engaged, their mothers both show up uninvited and a huge secret is revealed. Meanwhile, in flashbacks, we see a young Hig being sent to speech therapy because of his lisp.

"Exploring themes of family, trauma and our relationships with our own voices, 'Acute Accent' is a modern drama with a lot of humor and pathos," Kelly told The Korea Times.

"I was inspired to write the play because of the phenomenon of ‘gay voice’ and how many homosexual men hate the way they speak, even if they are proud of their identity. I was once told by a vocal coach that I had done irreparable damage to my vocal chords in pitching down my voice, trying to sound more typically masculine. On top of this, I wanted to explore family estrangement and how it can be overcome."

This will be the first Seoul performance of a long-form work by Kelly, a playwright and comedian whose scripts have been performed in six countries on three continents. His play "Mother and the Monster" has been staged multiple times all over the world, attracting great reviews and selling out a limited run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He is active in the Korean theatre and comedy scenes, and has contributed sketches to the Trust Fund Babies troup. He has also contributed articles to The Korea Times about the local theater, comedy and improv scenes.

He wrote the first draft of what would become "Acute Accent" in 2018, although he said the script has undergone many revisions and drafts since then.

"I have been trying to stage 'Acute Accent' for many years, but it has been difficult to find a cast with the right accents," he admitted.

Seoul Players is one of the major producers of amateur English-language theater in Seoul. It puts on several productions a year, including the annual 10 Minute Play Festival. It also completed a run of "Endgame" by Samuel Beckett last year.

A poster for the upcoming stage reading of Rory Kelly's "Acute Accent" / Courtesy of Seoul Players

This performance will be a rehearsed reading, with cast members holding scripts rather than working from memorization. The five actors in the cast are Louis Groves, Laramie Wilcox, Luke Adams, Charly McQuaid and Lorne Oliver, and Janete da Rocha is the producer. After the performance, there will be a short question-and-answer period with the cast and crew.

The 90-minute performance will be held at Uplift in central Seoul's Gyeongnidan neighborhood at 7 p.m. on Feb. 27. Tickets cost 5,000 won. Visit seoulplayers.org or follow @rorykellycomedy on Instagram for more information.