Performance
Long before I became a writer or a mother, I was a performer.
I trained and worked as a dancer, a theatre-maker, a circus aerialist, an actor and an improviser. I performed in tents, old railways arches, town squares, as well as in grand opera houses and theatres, across the UK, in Europe, America and East Asia. I worked with dance, theatre and circus companies and artists, including Volcano Theatre, Company F/Z, Cirque Bijou, Lindsey Butcher, Kathryn Hunter.
I made my own work, Line, Point and Plane, commissioned by the National Centre of Circus Arts, the London International Mime Festival and The Royal Opera House. This comprised a triptych of three aerial-theatre solos which you can view below.
Lifeline – seven ages of woman on a rope, from the start of a life to its end.
Dead Point – a monologue on a cloudswing, made in collaboration with Bryony Lavery and Mish Weaver.
Night Plane– a journey across a vast black cloth, made in collaboration with Rosemary Lee.
Coming back down
After ten years in the air, in 2008, I came down to earth, and joined Improbable, an extraordinary company of pioneering improvisers, theatre-makers and conversation facilitators. It was at this time that I began to write again – improvising and writing went hand in hand.
And then in 2012 I became a mother.
Writing and mothering have kept me largely off the stage for the last ten years, but I am not yet done with performing. I made my first solo, Lifeline when I was 25. Next year I will turn 50. I want to revisit that work, about life stages, from a different stage of my life….
Lifeline Redux will be a meditation on the many different ways to tell a life story and the many different stories one lifetime can hold. It will involve everything I have ever done, and some things I’ve never done: aerial; improvisation; dance; storytelling and more. I hope to invite a new and different kind of performance into being.