We sat down with Maddie Wakeling whose new show Roadside comes to The Cockpit from the 4th to 6th April. Roadside is a celebration of dance floor revelations and the search for places to call home.
What inspired you to turn your experiences of living in a van and growing up around festival and free-party culture into a one-person show?
My desire to make this show initially came when I heard that Mendip County Council wanted to ban roadside dwellers in the area, including in Glastonbury – where I grew up. The local area is home to a lot of people living in vans, caravans and wagons – it’s really integral to the community and to the way of life there. Also, importantly, there was the wider context of The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, which had just increased powers to evict and criminalise traveller communities across the UK.
So yeah in response to all of this I wanted to make a show about our community. It was just that – I just wanted to make a show about us. I was supported by Camden People’s Theatre at the time, as a Starting Blocks Artist, which was invaluable for the show – it gave me the time and space to really explore the idea.
I started with interviews. I drove down to the South West and I recorded a lot of conversations with people living at the sides of roads, or on laybys, or sites. I spent a lot of time sitting around fires and chatting with people. It was really gorgeous to have those conversations, especially across generations and different experiences. I spoke to some of my oldest friends and parents of friends and reconnected with people I’d not seen since school.
At the beginning I really didn’t know what the show would be about, I just wanted it to be rooted in our community.
How did the process of incorporating real-life testimony from new travelers influence the development of Roadside and its themes?
So as I said the show really began with the interviews. I had such a nice time chatting with people that the anger from which the show began transformed very quickly into something else. I asked people about evictions and harassment but nobody really wanted to talk about that – if I’m honest I don’t really want to talk about that! Mainly we sat and told funny stories. Through the interviews the anger or frustration that the idea stemmed from transformation into a desire to celebrate our community and our way of life.
The interviews also allowed me to reflect on what is embedded in the questions we choose to ask. Living in a van people love asking me ‘where do you go to the toilet’ often before they even know my name. Or ‘is that really difficult?’. The process allowed me to reflect a lot on the questions we choose to ask of people who live in a different way to us and why we ask them? These questions can be more revealing than the answers, I think! Most of my interviews turned into long hours spent telling stories together and I think this is something that has become really integral to the form of the show
The show explores the concept of creating a home for oneself — what personal insights or revelations emerged for you while working on this project?
I moved into a van when I was 21 and I always say it was because I didn’t want to have to have to work all the time. I wanted to have time for writing and making theatre and doing activism and I didn’t want to have to get a full-time job to pay bills and rent. But there are other reasons for my choice to live in this way, perhaps more important ones. The economic side is very easy to explain and understand so it’s the reason I always give. But there are more intangible reasons that it feels like the right place for me to call home and the right way for me to live. And I guess the show allows me to speak to these things: the intangible feeling of home and the feeling of community that just feels right.
I think, as we’ve moved through the process, I’ve also begun to allow myself to think about home in a more expansive and less tangible way. I have laughed listening back to some interviews at how I was often asking people questions that I myself would not be able to answer – Why do you like to live like this? Why did you decide to live like this? Who can ever answer in one sentence why they live like they do!
Can you share more about the Traveling Tales workshops and how the poetry and tapestry creations contribute to the storytelling of Roadside?
Yes, so during our R&D last year, we ran a community workshop – Traveling Tales – in Bristol. This time, we are expanding the workshops and will be offering them in Glastonbury, Bristol and London.
Traveling Tales offers free poetry and tapestry workshops for the traveller community and is facilitated by artists from the community. In the workshops, we explore themes of movement, home, belonging and community. They are wonderful spaces to try something creative and build community links between traveling folk.
Work from Traveling Tales will be exhibited at both our performance venues, in London and Bristol. It will then be archived by the South West Heritage Trust, as part of their resource on Gypsy Roma Traveller (GRT) History, which aims to diversify learning around rural history. The idea of creating an exhibition through poetry and visual art came out of the interviews, many people said they felt it was important to share our communities’ stories but in a form that felt right – through art making.
What do you hope audiences take away from experiencing Roadside and participating in the workshops?
I really enjoy performing Roadside! I find it joyful and exciting and fun and I hope that experience is shared with people in the audience.
Roadside transports you, along with Milly, to a magical night where you meet amazing people. A night where life feels possible and open in a way that can feel scary, but also massively exciting.
The aim of the show is of course not for everyone to leave and think, yes, I want to live in a van, but I guess it does ask you to reflect on what home and belonging means to you…