Jessica Casey is like no other girl and maybe like all the girls. Once she gets legs she’s gone. Out from the wild imaginations of her creators. Into their lives, their farms, their workplace, their city, flicking her purple nails and demanding attention. Living in the real world is quite a task and she is constantly coming up against her own foibles as she tries to find where she fits in this mesme...
Jessica Casey is like no other girl and maybe like all the girls. Once she gets legs she’s gone. Out from the wild imaginations of her creators. Into their lives, their farms, their workplace, their city, flicking her purple nails and demanding attention. Living in the real world is quite a task and she is constantly coming up against her own foibles as she tries to find where she fits in this mesmerizing world. Can a girl have dreams and where might they take her? What’s a girl got to do to make them come true? Jessica Casey is the story of how the future is made, one mistake at a time. It brings us into the funny phantasmagoric world of a young woman on the threshold of the adult world. The Other Works, mainly poems, reveal to us an authentic process, gentle observations of lived details and imagined worlds, a bracing emotional integrity and a depth that reminds us of the intrinsic human value of poetry in our lives.
Jessica Casey and Other Works is the first formal publication of Away With Words, an innovative arts project exploring creativity through writing for people with intellectual disabilities. It is edited by Mary Madec and its publication marks the fifth anniversary of the Away With Words project. The accompanying DVD contains an animated short created by visual artist Aideen Barry in collaboration with the Away With Words writers.
About the DVD: The Animated Short “Jessica Casey” was created with the collaboration of the Away With Words Collective and visual artist Aideen Barry. Shot over a period of weeks with members of the collective and with two very talented young actors Síofra Leonard and Aifric Henry Bruen. This moving image project was created by employing techniques in stop motion animation. The group were very much inspired by the films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and it was this influence that dictated how our protagonist ‘Jessica Casey’ would engage with the world that the Away With Words group had created. The short is loosely based on the accompanying story of Jessica Casey, and tracks her adventures of getting a job on a working farm, her attempts to earn a living, or drive a car and her struggle to get to Australia to go clubbing with her mate Cindy!
LAUNCH:Jessica Casey and Other Works will be launched at the 2012 Cuirt Literature Festival on 25th April. Further details of the launch here>>
