Lovely to meet you Luca. You’re set to bring your intersectional feminist physical theatre show, You Heard Me, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer. How does it feel to be taking this work up to Scottish audiences? 

It feels absolutely banging. I have a community of pals up in Glasgow and family in Edinburgh. I love Scotland. Like many people who are perceived as English I hold onto my Celtic roots at every opportunity I can (I am half Scottish). Bringing the show to Scotland is something I have been wanting to do since we started working on it. I am buzzing to be part of the Here & Now showcase and to be presenting the work within the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I have been part of the festival before in collaboration with other artists and companies, but this is the first time I have brought my own work. I would love to take You Heard Me around Scotland post Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I’m really excited to be presenting the work at ZOO Southside on their main stage. The team working at ZOO have been so lovely and welcoming. Yeah, it feels amazing to be meeting Scottish audiences and international audiences this summer. 

You Heard Me is described as ‘a loud show about quiet power’. Tell us a little about this. What sort of roles do sound and voice play in the unfolding of the performance, and why was it important for you to include this as a central aspect? 

Sound is central to the form of the work as well as the heart of the show. You Heard Me is rooted in a true story of me using my voice to get out of a violent attack. The only reason I got out of the situation is because someone chose to listen to my voice. It’s a two way thing. For your voice to have power other people have to choose to listen to it. So we wanted to make a piece of work that really speaks to this two way relationship, magnifying the messiness and difficulty of using your voice and the effort and energy of doing so and also the effort and energy of truly listening. Melanie Wilson is a devising member of the team and also composer of all original sound in the piece. Mel created an architecture of sound that follows the chronology of the story of my attack. It creates, at times, a claustrophobic atmosphere, and at other times, an expansive sonic world that surrounds the audience. I am the only performer on stage but I am very much interacting at all times with the sound, it’s super super integrated within the entire work, in particular the middle section of the show in which you hear an intricate and ever changing sound score that I respond to with highly physical movement.

You Heard Me confronts the impact sexual violence can have on both individuals and society at large. Why is it important to make creative work about this topic? 

So many times within this process I thought I should stop making the show. My experience of sexual violence is a fluctuating journey between thinking I am making too much of a fuss; that people will think I am being too dramatic;  that I shouldn’t be taking up space, as well as down playing my experience, the violence of my attack and the fear and danger of it. Sadly I don’t think I am alone in experiencing this propensity to quiet yourself or make yourself smaller. I have had the honour of collaborating with a group of brilliant artists who have care at the heart of their practice. At every wobble I had, they reminded me of the importance of not silencing myself. What we were all absolutely determined to do was to not make a work about sexual violence that generalised anything or tried to speak for other people. The only thing we could do was to tell my story. We wanted to forensically look at a moment between a woman (me) and male sexual violence (my attack); to examine the messiness of it, the humanness of it, the multitude of power and being overpowered; of resilience and exhaustion; or desperate panic and fear and determination. We wanted to share the messy, confusing and weird human moments. We wanted to capture this as opposed to talking theory or statistics. This is also not a show about me working out my trauma on stage. We have used the process of trauma to inform the structure of the work, specifically through the use of looping, you will notice that in the sound and my physicality, there are sonic loops and movements that I return to that crescendo in exhaustion levels. This is a show that is rooted in sexual violence and equally rooted in the messiness of connecting to your own voice and power. 

Audience care has always been integral to your creative process. In this vein, what sort of environment can Edinburgh audiences expect this August? (I thought this could be a good way of mentioning some heavier things in a positive light here? / creating a focus on it being a supportive environment, hand-outs and help available, ability to leave, etc) 

Care is at the heart of our process of making this show and of how we present the work in the final performance. The beauty of theatre is that there is a room full of (mostly) strangers. As an artist presenting work, there is no way of knowing how your audience are that day, how individuals feel, what their day has been like, what they need etc. The only thing the team and I can do is give any potential audience as much knowledge and information as possible so they can make an informed decision about seeing the work. You Heard Me is rooted in sexual violence, this is heavy and intense and sadly something experienced by too many people. The themes of the work hold the potential to be triggering. The purpose of us presenting this show is to be part of intersectionality feminist politics and conversations that advocate for the power of using your voice (in whatever ways feel right for you, including choosing silence and quieter ways of being) and collective listening. The show is a relaxed performance meaning people are welcome to tic and stim and to come and go as they need. You can leave at any time and reenter the space as many times as you need. There is a content advice document available on all advertising of the work that explains the black outs, haze, sound, lighting and details all text and performance that directly talks to sexual violence. Content advice is listed on all advertising as well. We have spoken about the work being softly fierce and fiercely soft. Our intention is that all audiences feel held, safe and informed from initial invitation to sitting in the theatre.