It has, once again, been a while since my last blog post: at some stage, there may (or may not) be others that fill in some of the gaps about some of what has taken up my time and energy in the interim, but for now, this one is all about celebrating the success of this year's Stories of Hope and Home Show.
Since first taking to the stage there back in 2022, our performance at Birmingham REP each July is now a well-established feature of the Stories of Hope and Home calendar. Starting each year with the prompt of a loose theme and a mostly blank canvas, each performance has been very different, and rightly so: they have reflected the different participants who have contributed to creating the pieces, and the different stories they want to tell.
While still infused with humour and hope, this year's theme bore witness to the increasingly challenging realities faced by people trapped in the asylum system. It was a script that very intentionally acknowledged the struggle.
Performance day was, as always, incredibly special. Even caught up as I was in trying to ensure everything went more or less to plan, there is a deep joy in seeing it come together. The feedback from the audience was overwhelmingly positive. Perhaps even more importantly, so was the feedback from the cast who had fun along the way and were proud of the end result. A celebratory picnic in the park, bringing together not just the cast, but many other participants from the group and friends old and new who had come to watch and support was the ideal way to round off the day.
Without a doubt, it fulfilled my greatest wish: that the group do themselves justice and allow other people a glimpse of what I already know: just how truly amazing they are!
And yes, that does sometimes involve them experiencing my grumpy school teacher voice along the way, but I am assured they do understand it comes from a place of great love! Because of course, it never just happens. The day itself, beautiful as it is, is the culmination of many months of hard work: reflecting, sharing, creating, devising, writing, learning, adapting, practising...
Each performance has also built on the experiences of previous years. This year's was, I think, our best ever (so far), standing as testament to the group's growing confidence as writers and performers and to the incredible commitment of a cast who, despite everything else going on in their lives, gave it their absolute all. It was a smaller cast who stood on stage, but they carried with them the words of many others who had contributed in different ways along the way. For the first time ever, we relied on the entire cast learning their lines, rather than performing with scripts in hand. Everyone on stage spoke: and everyone could be heard. They spoke with deep feeling, as if they meant every word ... because they really did.
It is such a huge privilege to be part of this process alongside these fabulous people.
Before the performance, we had just one full, uninterrupted run-through on the stage, on the morning of the same day. We filmed it, and while it is not the best recording, and obviously not the same as seeing it live, it still captures the story they wanted to tell, so I am sharing it here:
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