The seahorse strikes again

My debut solo show: A journey back to the stage

Photo: Phil Jones

What one thing could unite senior druid and pagan priest King Arthur Pendragon, Rishi Sunak, JK Rowling and Keir Starmer?

A strong condemning of environmental campaigners Rajan Naidu, 73, and Niamh Lynch, 21, from Just Stop Oil when they sprayed Stonehenge in orange powder paint on 19 June 2024, two days before Summer Solstice.

What has the Stonehenge paint attack, the 2019 Notre Dame Fire and a conspiracy theory claiming that Britains entire pigeon population has been converted into government owned spy drones got to do with each other?

They are all going into my new solo show ‘Pigeons in transit’ that is premiering during Offbeat Festival 2024 on Friday 13 September: A woman grappling with the overwhelming weight of environmental despair experiences a surreal awakening when mysterious parcels containing live pigeons appear on her doorstep.

Get your tickets here.

Broken Drama School Dreams, Meth, and Seahorses

Theatre has always been a part of my life. I spent formative months at Nordiska Folkhögskolan in Sweden and Rødkilde Theatre School in Denmark, auditioning my way to the final stages at the national drama schools in Copenhagen and Malmö along the way. I applied two or three years in a row. The third year I didn't get in was devastating. To cope, I flew to Berlin, where I stayed with a school friend, sharing a thin mattress on the floor in a houseshare.

My friend worked in a call center, took German lessons, and did a lot of bouldering. His room was basic—just the mattress and a slim standing glass cabinet with a mix of odd items. It was snowing when I arrived, and I remember having a falafel wrap with pink pickled turnip. When I look back and try to remember the flat, there was a vibe that reminds me of snake or crocodile skin, maybe because my friend's housemate either kept a pet snake or stored meth in the freezer, or both. I can’t quite remember the details.

We bought tickets to an opera held in a large Berlin apartment, with the location revealed only hours before the event. That trip helped me realise there were bigger things out there than getting into drama school. It was the last year I auditioned because that same year, I got accepted into the songwriting course at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark, and I moved on.

After returning to Copenhagen, I had a meeting with the drama school director. The only thing I remember from that meeting was him saying that everyone on the audition board thought I moved like a seahorse. I’m sure there were profound reflections behind this statement, but all I could think of sitting in that meeting was the fact that a group of theatre, movement, and voice experts had all sat around a table and agreed that I moved like a seahorse. It was a wonderfully absurd idea!

‘Pigeons in Transit’ will be my first time on a theatre stage since those days. It's not that I vowed never to touch theatre again; I just got so involved with music. I remember the strange realisation that becoming an actor was no longer my dream. That dream had been replaced by another, older dream that stemmed all the way back to my childhood but had been pretty much squashed and beaten into extinction during difficult years at a specialist music school in my pre-uni years. There is a strange vacuum that happens when you suddenly stop pursuing something you have been passionately working towards for years. In my case, it was getting into drama school. However, there was also a huge sense of freedom and relief. At the same time, somehow, I always knew I would return to the stage in some form or another.

Embracing the Seahorse in My Creative Process

I've come to discover that my creative process is very much like a seahorse moving back and forth in the water: gentle swaying. When seahorses move, they often appear to be gently swaying or bobbing up and down, much like a dance. This movement is slow and measured. I'm enjoying how the songs feed into the writing and how the stage design is inseparable from the incidental sounds I'm working on. It feels slow, laborious and like I’m running out of time but it’s a dance I very much enjoy and one of the most exciting projects I've worked on in a long time.

I have also found myself switching things up a bit and taken to drawing and sketching down my ideas with pen and wash to get my head out of the notebook and away from glaring computer screens. I find that it helps me think through the project as a whole, connecting the dots and condensing the big ideas into tangible scenes or stage design.

I'm so excited to bring this show to life in September: ‘Pigeons in Transit’, Friday 13 September, 6.30PM, Burton Taylor Studio, Gloucester St, Oxford OX1 2BN.

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Things that made it into my notebook:

• Music that has inspired the songwriting and production of the eight new original tracks that will be featuring in ‘Pigeons in Transit’: The Midwives Have Left and Breaking Up by Bat For Lashes, Frequency and Could I Be by Sylvan Esso, Ocean by Dirty Projectors and Björk, Wish We Had More Time by Alice Boman and Pleasure is All Mine by Björk. Find them all on my From the Seahorse’s Mouth Spotify Playlist.

• Show posters arrived yesterday and I was rather relieved to find that text, photos and logos were all in the right places.

  

• Resources for artists: While drawing up plans for ‘Pigeons in Transit’ I have been inspired by actor and writer Haley McGee (THE EX-BOYFRIEND YARD SALE, Age is a feeling). Haley’s website is full of free creative resources for artists and creatives alike which include things like an Artist’s Statement Template, Procrastination Busters and a Recipe for the Perfect Blurb. Check them out here.

• Reading that has inspired and fuelled my solo show writing: The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World by Roman Krznaric, Write It All Down: How to Put Your Life on the Page by Cathy Rentzenbrink and the first chapter of Staying with the Trouble by Donna J. Haraway.