Have you ever felt like you didn’t have the words?
Have you ever felt like you wanted to say the exact right thing, but couldn’t?
Have you ever wanted to make someone stop crying and just shut up?
Then our Help Yourself seminar is for you! Help Yourself is a new piece of contemporary theatre exploring self-care, grief and friendship.
Would you mind giving us a brief insight into what your show is?
We’re Jess and Victoria and we make theatre together. We’ve been friends for 15 years; we met at Glasgow Uni’s musical theatre society and bonded most over a profound shared love of Lady Gaga which abides to this day.
Our new show, Help Yourself, is an exciting chance for Fringe audiences to delete sadness and negativity from their lives. As the expert hosts, we’ll guide you through our 5-stage plan to change your mindset, fix difficult emotions and say all the right things in any situation!
It’s not really a spoiler to say that this façade crumbles as the show goes on. We ask why we struggle so much when the people we love are sad, and why it makes us so uncomfortable when people aren’t fully ‘ok’. It’s funny, it’s moving and most importantly it’s honest.
Tell us about the creative team and process involved?
Both of us do lots of different work like most creatives these days. Victoria comes from a performance art background, and Jess is more of a playwright, so the stuff we make together always draws from a range of inspiration.
Our process is really rooted in the relationship we have outside of the rehearsal room. Over the years, our friendship has gone from drinking/party buddies to something much more nuanced. The kind of deep, supportive and challenging conversations that we have as friends are something we really bring into our work.
We always start by writing; Dumping words onto a screen before questioning what it is we want to really express, and if these words are doing it justice. We play, make jokes, add in dance breaks, create new scenes and then scrap them in a day. It’s always a bit messy, maybe a nod to how we first met.
We’re also super excited to be working with Emma Ruse as our producer for this project; She’s a huge champion of new theatre in the Scottish scene and has been indispensable to the process of bringing Help Yourself to the Fringe.
How does it feel coming to the Fringe?
We brought our last show to the Fringe in 2018 and loved it, but it does take a lot of energy. We’ll be commuting a bit from Glasgow, plus juggling our respective dependents (a one-year-old cockapoo and a nine-year-old child, both devastated that they don’t meet the age limit for the show). But we are so thrilled to be performing at Summerhall; It’s a favourite venue for both of us because it has such a wonderfully curated range of work and a brilliant energy.
There are over 3,000 shows at the Fringe. So, what sets your show apart?
The show sits within a tradition of autobiographical theatre, but takes a different slant on it by creating a performance within a performance through the schism between the expert Help Yourself hosts and our real selves. In a way, these hosts are the armour we need to face the world, and we think most people can relate to that. There are more difficult stories in the show, but we share them all with a lightness and humour that is an honest reflection of us as people. And we have some excellent green and pink power suits that you won’t want to miss.
Is there anything specific you’re hoping for the audience to take away?
We do want people to come away from the show having had a lot of fun. In terms of the questions the show raises about sadness and friendship, we’ve had to consider our own knee-jerk reactions and our need to fix everything straight away. So perhaps the audience will leave asking those questions of themselves too.
Your ideal audience is in attendance, who’s watching? Or more importantly – who isn’t there…
The lightness of this show will work across most audiences of the fringe; We would say that folk who are interested in something a bit different but maybe not ready for full avant-garde performance art would be a brilliant audience for this show. Of course, everyone is welcome, but if you prefer shows that are more about movement and visuals than words and conversation then this probably isn’t the show for you.
It’s an intense month, so where you’re able, how do you plan to relax, and are there any other shows you intend to see or want to recommend?
We have two Mondays off, at which point we will be asleep for 24 hours. We talk about meditation a bit in the show, maybe we should try that in August! But, honestly, we’ve just accepted that it will be a whirlwind and that we can relax in September; We want to make the most of it!
We’re excited to see Thrown at the Traverse, Party Scene at Summerhall looks fab. Roundabout has some really exciting shows too, particularly Lady Dealer (we loved Martha Watson Allpress’ last play), Salty Irina and Hotter Project.
In your ideal world, how can we improve the world of the Fringe, of performance, and the industry?
Theatre needs to be properly funded and more sustainable; We know all of this. But accessibility also comes to mind. So many spaces can feel closed off when you’re starting out, and the less privileged you are the harder it is. We need a more open community, without nepotism, closed doors and obscure selection processes. We still have a long way to go.
