These are arresting, heart-stopping poems lit with a rare intensity. Hale’s poems don’t pull any punches, they explore what it is to live in a body and on the way touch the centre of the fragility deep inside all of us. Humane poems that will make you ache
Mona Arshi
Jamie Hale writes the poetry of survival. They are bold in their naming and lyrical in their honouring.
Raymond Antrobus
With its waves of fearlessness, and the speaker’s desperate attempt to be seen as themselves, the sonnet punches the reader to the ground.
Jamie is a poet, and a glorious poet, and I mean that he is literally a poet but he is also a poet in how he sees the world, and this is a beautiful, I think, piece, about how we look at death and how we look after each other and I really hope people enjoy it, Jamie’s a very special writer and a very special human being.
Jack Thorne
The starkness of these words stops me in my tracks. This is a poet with something to say and they’re saying it with art, craft, skill and raw shock. And that’s not all. The closing sonnet is, for me, an unforgettable riposte to Rupert Brooke’s ‘If I should die’. Maybe you can’t bear anything else about Covid either? Shield is the exception that proves the rule.
Helena Nelson – Sphinx Reviews, Happenstance Press
Come the end of the evening I’d laughed, I’d cried and I’d planned a revolution, all in the space of two hours. Being in the room with these pieces discloses our human connectedness. The importance of putting the power to represent disability and to self-define in the hands of those who know cannot be underestimated. This showcase is an excitingly creative, vital means of making that true.
An anthology of pieces by disabled artists, The Acts by CRIPtic Arts takes the audience to the moon and back, thinks about the deconstructed nature of performance, explores the value of life and the legacy we leave behind. Celebrating disability arts, this highly inclusive showcase offers audio-description, BSL and captioning
The Reviews Hub (the Acts 2024)
A diverse evening across the extended scope of cross-arts, from experimental work to immersive performance, the event calls not for a typical review, but an open invitation to engage with work created by the wider disabled community, welcoming a spectrum of responses that form the unique takeaways audiences leave the space with – a new thing learnt or a new thought sparked.
Matinee Mouse (The Acts, 2024)
“Multi-talented writer and theatre maker Jamie Hale has very rightly been recognised for his work and contributions to the arts. The founder of CRIPtic Arts, an organisation established in 2019, dedicated to nurturing art made by d/Deaf and Disabled creatives, Jamie’s commitment to support fellow artists has been exemplary. A culmination of a year’s development programme, CRIPtic Arts present CRIPtic Pit Party, a powerful evening of sharing and performance.”
Lucy Basaba – Theatre Full Stop (CRIPtic Pit Party, 2021)
Overall, it was a strong production and an interesting fusion of different theatrical approaches and theatre companies
Danai – Theatre and Tonic (The Acts 2024)
★★★★☆ The pieces themselves are uncompromising in their point of view: honest creations by d/Deaf or neurodiverse individuals inviting us into their world. They are made accessible TO able audiences, but they don’t make justifying their reality to them a goal […] For those with a taste for the experimental and the creative, the Pit Party is very worth it. I left having challenged many of my comfortable assumptions about who Art is for and what Art ought to be.
Charlie Callas, Plays to See (CRIPtic Pit Party 2021)
Transpose
Director Barbican Centre, 2025
Liberty Festival
Artistic Director Wandsworth Borough of Culture
The Acts
Curator and Director Barbican Centre 2024
CRIPtic Pit Party
Curator and Director Barbican Centre 2021
NOT DYING / Quality of Life is Not a Measurable Outcome
Unashamedly loud and proud, Hale comes alive – and is indeed at his best – when he’s making comedy […] he takes command of the stage […] He’s clearly on the ascendant with last years’ Spread the Word award under his belt. He comes across as confident and full of potential as a writer and performer.
An acerbically funny and deeply thought-provoking monologue […] Hale is a compelling and witty performer who makes you laugh and reflect in equal measure.
This show is a juggernaut to the chest. It tackles the challenge of being wheelchair-bound in a world starved of empathy and unwillingness by the state to provide the resources to cope – coupled with the profound existential crisis of trying to find purpose and happiness as a citizen in a state that deems them too expensive.
