It has been announced that Jenny Sealey OBE, Artistic Director of Graeae, is the 2024 recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre Award. She will be honoured at the UK Theatre Awards ceremony, taking place on Sunday 20 October at 8 Northumberland Avenue, sponsored by Encore. The UK Theatre Awards celebrate the very best of theatre across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Awards are given for creative excellence and outstanding work both on and off stage, including the coveted UK’s Most Welcoming Theatre Award.
As Artistic Director of Graeae since 1997, Jenny has pioneered a new theatrical language ‘aesthetics of artistic access’, experimenting with bilingual British Sign Language and English, pre-recorded BSL, creative captioning and in-ear live audio description methods. Graeae’s ethos of placing of Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent artists centre stage has engineered a cultural shift, influencing mainstream theatre both nationally and internationally.