Help Stories About My Body become a FILM!

Kia ora e hoa!

Thank you for being here!

Have you seen Stories About My Body? It’s a solo show by me! Morgana O’Reilly! And over the last two years it’s really gotten around. I’ve performed it in Melbourne, Auckland, Waiheke, Wellington, Whangarei, Taranaki, Tauranga and Hastings! I've loved every moment. If you came to one of these shows, thank you!

The show is a love letter to my body and to yours.

It's an ode to motherhood and the physical changes one's body goes through after literally performing wizardry. It’s silly and funny and a little bit naughty. It’s got a heart as big as a boat and (in my humble opinion) it is something good in the world. 

If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. 

Or maybe you haven’t seen it and you would like to?

Well, I have a solution!

As much as I would LOVE to tour it forever, I have school drop-offs to do.

So instead, I’m working with an Emmy Award winning team to bring Stories About My Body to a screen near you!

But damn, them cameras and clever people who use them are expensive.

So, we’re drumming up the dosh as best we can… HERE! Where it’s all about YOU!

YOU can be KEY to our SUCCESS!

Ah. Sorry for all the yelling.

Seriously though.

We are trying to raise $33k to film this beauty. Although these funds are comparatively small in the badlands of film-making - we’ll be calling in a lot of favours and being as renegade as we can - we know with our collective talents, we can make something truly unique.

By chipping in what you can, we can pay people for their work and the equipment required to shoot. We can take this show beyond the theatre, beyond New Zealand, out into the WORLD!

THE SHOW

Stories About My Body comes directly from my heart. It is a one woman show that celebrates what it truly means to have a body and a love letter to a 12 year old me, who hated hers so much. Sitting somewhere in the wonderland of stand-up comedy, spoken word and storytelling, Stories About My Body has moved audiences to laughter and tears everywhere it’s toured. 

Since its first emergence into the world in March 2022, it’s been performed over 50 times between Australia and New Zealand and won Best In Fringe Award at Whangārei Fringe Festival 2022 along the way. 

There are diary entries excavated from the padlocked vault of my tween memories, where you can hear the first hatchings of hatred I’d learned to have for my (exceptionally average and healthy) body. 

There are fun facts about how falling in love changes the way your heart beats. I tell the ridiculous true story of selling my toes at foot fetish parties in New York City and the show ends with actual footage of me birthing my second child. Big stuff! 

The audience laughs a lot, but the show comes with a hefty heart and some nights I can hear the audience audibly crying. I am proud to say that although the content is strong-willed, the show has sold out most of its seasons and the feedback has utterly floored me.

THE FILM

The theatre show has moved people in the way only live theatre can, but with the help and support of my super experienced team we will transplant it’s heart to screen, giving it a platform to reach beyond the limits of a theatre auditorium.

Stories About My Body will be a comedy special filmed on stage, but cinematically elevated to make it sing louder. Use of projection, animation, camera and stage tricks, costume changes in the flick of a cut, set and location shifts, sound design, home movies and photos from my youth all make Stories About My Body a multimedia comedy-special feature-film as unique unto itself, as your body is to you.

Whatever you can manage we would be BEYOND grateful! 

A cherry on top would be sharing this link to let others know about it!

OUR AMAZING TEAM

Director/Actor

Morgana O’Reilly is an actor and creator, based between New Zealand and Australia. Morgana is best known for her roles as Kylie Bucknell in iconic 2014 horror/comedy Housebound, Jess in TV3’s comedy Mean Mums, her infamous Neighbours character Naomi Canning, Narelle Stang in Foxtel's Wentworth and Rose in the Emmy Award winning INSiDE, for which she won best actress award in both London and Rio Web Fests 2021. Morgana’s theatre credits include Streetcar Named Desire, When the Rain Stops Falling, Bare, Othello, Amadeus, Hand to God and Venus in Fur for companies such as The Silo and Auckland Theatre company. She created and performed her own one-woman show The Height of the Eiffel Tower which toured the Auckland, New York and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals and was most famously performed in people’s homes all over the world as part of ‘The Living Room Tour’.

Luminous Beast is an Emmy award-winning screen production company based in Auckland, Aotearoa. In 2021, Shoshana McCallum, Dan Musgrove and Peter Salmon joined forces and the Beast was born! Their debut series, INSiDE, picked up an International Emmy Award in 2021 and their premium one hour drama, After the Party, co-produced with Lingo Pictures in Australia, will be launching on TVNZ this year. With a focus on iconic characters, curious worlds, genre-smashing narratives and fresh perspectives, Luminous Beast is committed to telling stories that reflect our rapidly changing world, champion diversity and give people all the feels.

Co-director

Not only is Peter Salmon Morgana’s husband and real-life best birth partner ever, he is an International Emmy and BAFTA award winning director with over 20 years of professional experience in film and television that has seen him take his work to Cannes, New York, Telluride and numerous other film festivals across the globe.

Producers

Alix Whittaker has Produced numerous moving image works including international award winning short films and music videos, and Chris & Eli’s Porn Revolution (available to watch on The Spinoff). Alix Line Produced Albularyo (one episode of TVNZ’s Supernatural Anthology Series), Production Managed Ghost Bride (feature film by David Blyth), and has Series Produced 3 series of Someday Stories. She has also co-produced feature film Mega Time Squad, and Associate Produced feature film Stray.

Emmy Award winning producer Liz DiFiore (INSiDE - miniseries) has collaborated on over 60 NZ and International film and TV productions spanning all genres.. She recently produced 6 x 1 Hr drama series After the Party with longtime collaborator Peter Salmon, Luminous Beast and Australia’s Lingo Pictures (Helen Bowden).

Todd Waters (he/him) is an award-winning producer of theatre, stand-up comedy, live events and short films. To date he's produced over 40 projects over the last 7 years and is a stonkingly proud gay man.

If your wallet happens to go deeper than this, we have some lovely gifts in mind for you too! We’ll be in touch.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. From the bottom of my heart. 

I cannot wait to show you the final product!