Read about Kati’s theatre work

Chopped Onion was performed at the Battersea Arts Centre in October 2011, featuring actors Christopher Hammond, Frederick Roll and Avita Jay.

Play synopsis

Chopped Onion is a rollicking black comedy about people who cannot stop crying.

When an enormous onion is discovered growing in the road, local residents fetch their kitchen knives and chop it out by its roots. Chopping the onion makes them cry. Hysteria ensues. Some people weep with laughter, some sob with joy and one person is blinded by grief. Through stylised mime, clowning, cabaret song and dance, the residents open up to each other, revealing their funniest and darkest secrets.

Chopped Onion is a devised play which has been developed through workshops with professional actors and a community group based in north London.

A 15’ version of the play is available. We are open to requests for a 25’-30’ version.

Background to the play

We know that when actors laugh, the audience often laughs, but what happens when actors cry on stage? Can crying be fun and entertaining for an audience? Can the sight of an actor weeping make an audience laugh? I’ve written Chopped Onion in order to investigate the comic potential of tears.

Chopped Onion is a quirky, playful piece which makes full use of actors’ physical and musical talents, incorporating stylised mime, dance and song. It is designed to appeal to new theatre audiences as well as to more experienced theatregoers. The script is underpinned by some research I’ve been doing into the cultural history of crying on stage, focusing on Shakespeare, the Roman poet Horace and actors Christopher Plummer and Patti LuPone, all of whom have commented on the comic potential of tears.

In Chopped Onion a community of local residents, who have formerly been strangers to each other, bond over the shared experience of destroying an enormous onion. This cathartic spectacle should resonate with members of the audience who have recently experienced the August riots.