I've got a new job for You Me Bum Bum Train!

As fun as it is to brave the highs and lows of being your own boss, I’m excited to say I’m now working for a theatre company I love, You Me Bum Bum Train. Here’s what I wrote about them back in 2015 when they were gearing up for their last show:

*some text has been redacted to protect secrecy

I first heard about YMBBT when I’d just arrived in London and had absolutely NO FRIENDS. So it was a perfect opportunity to be involved in theatre and meet some people who I might be able to turn into them (friends). What happened next stretched the edges of even my widest dreams.

The basic idea is that the audience travel through different rooms – full, 3D sets– theoith soidhskfh sadhuireg fudhfdj ejfhs sidfh, dkajfh fsjkfhuewbfjshf sjfhsuwmnwkuehakdh dksdhisefh, (kdjhf, whyufrfg!!!!) The show came about when directors Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd felt disillusioned with the self indulgence of the theatre and art happening around them. Their idea was to create something that was entirely for the audience, that provided experiences they wouldn’t normally get to experience, and some they might be familiar with too. For example: my first night as an actor was in 2008, where for 6 Saturday nights in a row, I dolled myself up and stood in a fake queue to a cbdh skdfjhreu I’d never get into. And I loved it.

The audience started in alskjd, a goduldk sjdh where a gold-suited DJ spun cheesy classics & the margaritas were free. Some drama students were keen to show how good at acting drunk they were, but Morgan quickly shut them down – one of the best things about YMBBT is how accurately they achieve a sense of reality – the acting is underplayed, understated so it feels like real life, and the sets are intricately detailed, down to plug sockets in the walls, the smells, the outside sounds. The scenes are juxtaposed between quite normal, familiar experiences, to weirder ones like entering a cnsakjfhdg kfjhg fhkdfhsd kj hs fsdkfjdfhkjdsf. or presenting a fhusi skjfh and askfjdshgfk real celebrities (aksdhdfsdki fdhfk, fkjsdfhd sjerb, slkfhruieb dbd, fhfy, alfkhroi, OKFHIREUHM & JSKFJDHkjdfj rsjj all took part).

For the next full show in 2010 I became a Scene Leader, which meant I had to recruit 50 volunteer actors to work for 5 hours a night, unpaid and in extreme conditions. Why did they agree to do it? It’s incredible to be part of something so wildly impossible. The look on that person’s face when they enter and you get to watch their mind being completely blown by what’s going on – there are temperature changes, playing with different levels, unexpected modes of transport… after the 2012 show, lots of audience asked how in the jdeban shie scene they went from being on the 5th floor of a building to being suddenly outside? (They weren’t). When you go on the journey it moves to fast for your brain to process what’s just happened, so it feels a bit like you’ve just taken some really exciting mind altering substances. A bit like Quantum Leaping into different bodies in quick succession. And with no guide.

How? The show relies on the support of thousands of volunteers – cast and crew are all giving their time and expertise for no money, but not without return… The directors have tried to make it as valuable to volunteers as possible by providing training of skills like plumbing, carpentry, and offering experience in production roles, for example. When I did it, I was given an amazing amount of responsibility and… POWER. 5 years later, it’s still the best job I’ve ever had. It felt amazing to be a vital part of something so crazy, ambitious, ridiculous and actually life-changing. Although as a performer in the show you’re in one scene, repeating it up to 80 times a night, the unique reactions of each audience member keep it entertaining. The one thing that links the scenes is an outrageous sense of humour. You can tell Bond & Lloyd enjoy messing with the minds of their customers. Almost as much as they like slfjfs erutiertub daushskfh.

Tickets always sell out in a matter of minutes, which makes sense (they worked out just to break even the actual cost of a ticket should be £3,900) but is kind of unprecedented for a theatre show. So, there are no tickets left for this year’s show, BUT, you can still be involved by volunteering. This could be acting in scenes, leading a scene, helping with building, decorating, stage managing, recruiting. Anything you fancy. And you can do as many or as few shows as you choose. You don’t need any experience, talent, connections, blah blah blah. They even feed you if you come in for a full day.

For my part, I’d really recommend it. I got to feel really integral to something cutting edge that wasn’t wanky, meet some amazing people who’ve been vital connections in the work I do now, excel at being a BOSS and have a lot of fun at the same time.

Plus I did actually manage to make some friends.

And now we’re back!, and we want you to be part of it! Sign up at Bum Bum World to find out more, and you can book yourself into a Big Meet every Tuesday for the next few weeks, where the founders explain the show and how you can be involved (7-9pm central London).

Scribble Pie is back!

After an almost 4 year hiatus, Scribble Pie is back on the scene, with an exciting new venue: the notorious Bethnal Green Working Men’s club. It’s an event I’ve been doing with Amar Chadha Patel for 13 years and has a special place in my heart because of all the love that goes into making it happen, and all the magical things that we’ve seen presented over the years. It’s a variety night with a big focus on getting variety and encouraging people to experiment and do whatever they really want to try with as few boundaries as possible. It only happens when we feel like doing it, and the feeling right now is that we do really want to do it.

The first one is on the 10th November 222, but I think we’ll be doing them every couple of months from now on. If we feel like it.

I made this in my room with a green screen mask I made out of a bit of green paper.

A man complimented me

This year I took my show Ram of God to the Brighton fringe. In a very silly way it looks at the mechanics of patriarchy, gender and sexuality’s fraught relationship with institutions of power and our complicity in perpetuating that. Structured like a religious ceremony that descends into a milky sex cult rave, the audience, as the adoring congregation, are asked at various points to allow and support the charismatic leader’s reign, thereby condoning and enabling the abuse. Drawing on real life religious traditions, women are denigrated for having boobs (God’s punishment for the horrendous sins of womankind) while simultaneously suckling milk from the Holy Teat is held up as a sacred act. This is my satirical take on the contradictions and double standards implicit not only in many religions but in many systems within a patriarchy. One of my favourite bits to perform is a heavy metal track (‘Boobs are Sins, show your sins’) in which I (dressed in drag as Ram, a Russell Brand-esque half man/half sheep) rip off my vest to reveal my female chest painted with a six pack, chest hair and nipples (disguised as male nipples).

Performing this is fun and liberating. But I don’t think of being naked as something that is particularly radical. It is not even illegal in the UK as long as you are not doing anything sexual or doing it to shock. So you could walk down the street naked whenever you want – I hope you do. And if you think about Free The Nipple long enough you can’t logically defend the idea that women’s chests are sexual and men’s are not. Just because something’s socially accepted, doesn’t mean it’s correct or fair. And to me, as a human who happens to have breasts, that’s just my body, just as a man’s is his. But it feels gratifying to be able to pretend I’m a man and therefore ‘allowed’ to bare my chest while at the same time telling the audience women’s chests are bad but also they should be exposed for me to look at.

It is wild to me that we live in a world where a woman can’t for example, buy a swimming costume that covers a woman’s natural hairline, yet it is not generally socially acceptable to show your pubic hair. What would it mean to be able to buy as standard, comfortable, practical clothes that didn’t necessitate you changing your body before you wore them? What different message would that tell young girls?

After the Brighton show a man sat on the same table as us was staring and laughing. We asked what was going on and he apologised and said he recognised me from the show. He’d enjoyed it a lot, he said. ‘How old are you?’ He asked – immediately my friend’s guard went up. I was in post-show mode where you’re still on show and you have to be good natured and grateful for people coming. ‘Late thirties, why?’ ‘Well done’, he said, ‘you have very pert breasts, I thought you were mid twenties. Well done.’ ‘Not the point’ I mumbled, while inside a big pool of shame and disappointment opened up. I’d just come off stage from a show I was proud of: I’d written it, produced it, directed it, made props, costume, sound and video content for it, promoted it, performed it to a crowd that enjoyed it, hoping to spread a message of empowerment and inclusivity, and all I’d given this man was the impression that my greatest achievement was young-looking tits. And worse, that as a woman exposing herself to the world, I had asked for it and his comment was what I wanted. Bleaurgh. Even though I didn’t want to admit it, it took me a couple of days to feel okay about it again.

When you put yourself on stage you are already exposing yourself. Making yourself vulnerable to a world of critics, opinions and interpretations. My brother, who owns his own business sometimes asks if I’m scared of a backlash – from his perspective of wanting to please customers, some of the things I say and do publicly feel dangerous. But that is exactly the point. As artists we’re not here to be pleasing, even though I do want people to have a good time at my shows. And we have to accept that not everyone’s going to have the takeaway we want from it. I can only hope that for every middle aged man who thinks it’s a compliment to tell me ‘nice tits’ there’s a young woman who feels empowered to speak back or make a change, however small.

Ram of God as featured in The Guardian by The Other Richard, 2020

In the moment, I genuinely thought he wanted to give me a compliment, but the more time that passes I notice the affect it had on me and I become less convinced it was accidental. If it felt threatening to him to see a woman owning her sexuality, and making fun of the systems that uphold his power, what better way to keep her in her place by letting her know that the sex was all you saw, and her body just an object for you to appraise? I felt in the moment like I’d failed and was depressed for the world, but maybe I’ll choose to interpret it as a success. Maybe I’ll interpret his reaction as a a scared man, suddenly aware that his world is slipping away from him.

Fuck it: if he can do it so can I.

Ram of God at Brighton fringe 2022 by Gemma Hentsch in Brighton Spiegeltent

So yeah, come and see the show: there’s tits in it! And not just normal ones, ones that look slightly younger than they actually are! Youth is the pinnacle of female achievement! Youth and tits. Come see young tits! <——— new marketing strategy

I Want to Make Grown Men Weep

When I was 13 I decided not to cry and I didn’t again for 3 years. With a twisted emo sad-clown logic, I wanted to be like boys. I wanted to have control over myself. I didn’t want anyone to see how much they upset me. I discovered the power in stoicism, the unspoken authority you are afforded when you seem impenetrable, like nothing gets to you.

I thought if I didn’t let any emotion out I could prevent any emotion from getting in. And in a way, it worked. I was numb, like a window, looking through. But it didn’t work. Feelings still festered underneath: when I rediscovered crying again, I realised I’d been denying myself an important outlet.

Boys will be boys but boys don’t cry. I want to think about what we do to men when we tell them it’s not okay to cry. If crying IS a product of a healthy emotional state, then what are these men missing and missing out on? 

That’s when I decided: I want to make grown men weep. I want them to feel what it’s like to uncork the bottle and experience the intense burden of the bottle’s weight being lifted, I want them to feel the strength in vulnerability, the power in submitting to being out of control. I want them to feel the wild abandon of confronting the feeling head on, I want them to experience their bodies levelling out and tempering off. 

I want them to access that joy and relief and catharsis that they haven’t always been allowed access to.

I have had several ex male partners who didn’t cry and I started on them. I made all of them cry and it is one of the things I am most proud of. Because in my opinion it was a gift that will help them with their forward lives. I expect they cried most at the breakdown of our relationship, and there is a poetic justice in that. 

So cry, all of you. Cry until there’s nothing left. Otherwise you might dry up.

I Want To Make Grown Men Weep premieres as an audio show at Camden People’s Theatre’s SPRINT DIGITAL festival from May 31st-June 6th (available on demand). 40 mins, Pay What You Want

Pink Ink Art

Lockdown’s made me seek collaborations in new ways, since we can’t have any of the gigs and fringes that used to fulfil this drive to create and perform and be wild together.

In my film club there are lots of brilliant characters from all different professions, and Bea Watts @pink.ink.art is an illustrator and animator. Her films have a combination of childlike innocence and wicked humour that I particularly enjoy. See these examples…

Nadine wild Palmer @Nadinewildpalm is and author and actor and also the best person I know

At the moment she’s selling personalised Instagram backdrops decorated with things you love. I think I said something like eggs, rainbows, happy/sad, beautiful chaos, skulls and stormy weather.

I loved it so much I got one for my friend Nadine. She also likes eggs. Aaaand magpies, music, the moon, sixes, palm trees, hibiscus flowers, cocktails, books and crows.

As an artist , Bea’s poppy kitsch style would be a perfect companion for my YouTuber princess show Drink Your Pink. The plan now is to keep developing the live show and also make it into a film, incorporating her drawings and animations. This possibility fills me with excitement. And we need to find excitement where we can these days…

Check out

Ram of God online now for Stockholm fringe

When the world gave us mouldy lemons I threw them away and made a film instead. Ram of God is premiering as a film instead of a live show, online now as part of Stockholm fringe. It was exciting and challenging to be working in a format I’m not used to, but I had a lot of fun playing with the different possibilities and limitations. Like my live shows I play all the characters, and I also filmed and edited it. There’s only one shot that I had help with – I asked my mum to stand on a ladder and film whilst chucking milk at me. Unfortunately milk got in the camera and I learnt my lesson the hard way: DO EVERYTHING YOURSELF AND NEVER ASK FOR HELP. On the plus side, although the camera was out of action for a week, the shot is sensational (thanks mum) and I put it in as many times as possible. I tried to keep the element of live theatre, so this isn’t really a film or a filmed theatre show, but a theatrical film: messy, rough round the edges, ridiculous, fun, lo-fi and full of joy. Rather than an attack on any one religion, it asks the question to what extent patriarchy is a cult in which men are conditioned to lead and women are conditioned to follow.

Available to stream now until the end of Saturday for 49 SEK (£4.34)

Working in film

Since the apocalypse started, like many others working in live performance I’ve had all my shows cancelled and had to find new ways of working. I was excited to get into Stockholm fringe this year, with my new show Ram of God, and instead of cancelling performances, they’ve decided to stream films of them instead. Since I hadn’t yet made the show or performed it onstage, it’s meant the show is now being conceived as a film that I’ll later translate into a live show. It’s been fun experimenting with the new possibilities and limitations of film, but I do feel like that character in American Beauty who loves plastic bags.

Here’s a bit of what I’ve been working on – this will be near the beginning of the show when I’m trying to lure people into the cult.

You can watch the full version online as part of Stockholm fringe 15th-19th September.

Film Club - Interrupted

My second week in film club saw me scrabbling around making egg puppets of different sizes, lugging about disembodied legs and getting up early to avoid having to stop filming when it started to rain. I took on an ambitious project and was editing right up to the final hour – I would have liked longer to work on the sound but I’m happy with it in general and feel like once it’s handed in, it’s finished. I am loving the process of having to think in a way that’s very different from performing live where you have the audience in a fixed position and only one chance to perform it as you would like. I miss being able to react to the audience, but it’s great to have something to show for it at the end, that isn’t over once you’ve stepped off stage. The word this week was ‘interrupted’.

I'm in the Film Club

Some friends have started a film club and I joined this week. We get a one word prompt and the only rule is it has to be 3 mins or under. The word this week was PERMISSION, and this is my entry. I didn’t realise until I started filming that my original idea would have actually been about 45 mins long, and this is only the very beginning. So, it was a good learning curve to transition from thinking about making solo live shows to short films.

I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You

I’ve been studying jazz singing and getting introduced to lots of music, this is an experiment with layering, I liked the way the different voices get more and more out of step.

Blue Dream Scene from Drink Your Pink

Dream scene from my show Drink Your Pink, which tells the story of a YouTuber princess locked in a tower in a world of pink, the only colour she has ever known. At night she is plagued by weird, sexual dreams of blue, and the uneasy feeling that perhaps there could be more… This film didn’t make it into the show, instead I used a sexy cut of the music video ‘All Rise’ by noughties boyband Blue. But now that we’re all locked in our towers I’ve had time to edit it and put it on YouTube, becoming more and more like my character every day. Been having a lot more dreams like this lately too.

I had to film this in front of a ground floor window that’s opposite a school playground and also a busy thoroughfare so I’ve got some interesting takes where I’m mid kiss and then suddenly look startled and duck out of view.

Bearded Lady in Red

Homage to Chris de Burgh’s 1986 classic.

All the Bearded Ladies

Queen Beard meets Queen Bey in this homage to one of the most iconic music videos of the noughties.

Bearded Lady Edinburgh Fringe Trailer

Just a couple of days before I head up to Edinburgh for the fringe, to perform my bearded lady show. The trailer is out now! People on the streets often ask me where my beard comes from, so I hope this answers that question. Inspired by Beyonce’s ‘All Night’ from her album Lemonade.

Theresa May leaves Downing Street

So, this is what I was doing yesterday. It’s surprisingly naughty…

Review of my Bearded Lady show by The Brighton Blogger Grace Scott

https://brightonblogger.co.uk/2019/05/08/the-adventures-of-the-bearded-lady-at-brighton-fringe-review/

Strong & Stable

A last minute collaboration with Studio Yes/Yes it’s Funny… I don’t want to give the game away, but I’m the Prime Minister.

Halloween sketch for BBC3 by Yes It's Funny

Sketch for BBC3 by Yes It's Funny

Asking for directions from the powerhouse that is Amer Chadha Patel for a sketch for Yes It’s Funny for BBC3.

Roads - new performance collaboration

At the Edinburgh fringe this year I was enchanted to meet performance artist Ethereal Andy. Together we conceived of Roads - an improvised performance that takes inspiration from the noise of the everyday and asks people to retune to their surroundings. Born on a bench on Edinburgh's Grassmarket, we have since performed the piece at Mystika Glamoor's Kweer Kabaret, and Our Night at Arch 504 in Brixton. Now in development, we plan to take Roads back to public spaces and see where it leads us.