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Dr Timothy Rhys

Lecturer

School of English, Communication and Philosophy

Email
RhysT@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 29208 75613
Campuses
John Percival Building, Room 1.08a, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU

Overview

I am part of the School's Creative Writing research group. I am also a freelance professional playwright and scriptwriter.

Research

I specialise in Playwriting and Screenwriting. 

My two most recent plays explore different aspects of the autistic experience and challange inaccurate stereotypes. Touch Blue Touch Yellow follows a young autistic man entering adulthood and navigating the socail and workplace jungle of the non-autistic world. In doing so, it looks at the pressures of forced conformity on both auutistic and non-autistic people. The play was a commission from Winterlight Theatre and was funded by the Arts Council of Wales and the National Lottery. My interest in this area was inspired by my own autistic son. The play included four short poems by my wife, poet Tracey Rhys.

Quiet Hands grew out of research the director (Chris Durnall) and myself undertook among autistic adults. This research, supported by the Wales Autism Research Centre and the Arts Council of Wales, revealed the alarming prevalence of predatory maunipulative bullying of autistic people who lived independently. Known as 'mate crime' (due to its links to disability 'hate crime'), this under-reported and dangerous phenomenon became the main focus of my second play for Winterlight. The title comes from a common instruction given to autistic children undergoing the Behaviourist therapy known as ABA, in which children are trained to mimic the behaviour of "normal" society and to cut out any of their own behaviours that their therapist (in consultation with their families) deems inappropriate. This learned compliance can render an autistic person less able to resist the demands of predatory individuals in adulthood. 

Teaching

I currently teach on the Creative Writing MA and teach Playwriting and Screenwriting on the English Literature and Creative Writing BA. This year, I will begin supervising three new PhD students.

Biography

Tim Rhys teaches Creative Writing, specialising in dramatic writing for stage, screen and radio. He is also a professional playwright and script-writer.

He has written stage-plays for Volcano Theatre Company, Made in Wales Stage Co, The Sherman Theatre Company, The Old Red Lion Theatre, London and Theatr Y Byd, as well as large-scale community plays for the Garw and Ogmore Valley and for Three Crosses, Gower, and youth theatre plays for the Sherman and Cynon Valley Youth Theatre.

His radio plays have been broadcast by BBC Radio 4 and Radio Wales and include The Cull (Feb 2005), Riding With Buffalo Bill, The Member For Penbanog and a six-part series, The Last Visible Dog (written with Peter Jones). For two and half years, he was one of the regular scriptwriters on the BBC Wales drama serial Station Road.

His short film, Half Life, won the award for Best UK Short Film at the 2004 Manchester International Festival of Fantastic Films. He was also the first Internet Writer in Residence on the British Council's LearnEnglish website, for whom he has written two science fiction web-serials.

His most recent works are the feature film Crow (screenplay co-written with Wyndham Price, adapted from the stage play Stone the Crows by Tim Rhys) and the two stage plays Touch Blue Touch Yellow and Quiet Hands.

Professional memberships

Writers' Guild of Great Britain

Supervisions

I have three new PGR students about to start. Their PhDs are:

  • Screenplay adaptations of stories from the Mahabharata and a critical analyis of the different narrative structures in Indian myth and contemprary Western culture;
  • A screenplay and critical analysis of the interface between Turkish cinema and Western culture, exploring the Western orientalism of Turkish cinema;
  • A personal memoir in the form of a graphic novel.