RAM WILL NOURISH YOU
RAM WILL PUNISH YOU
RAM WILL COME AGAIN
Welcome to the church of Ram, where sheep are people, people are sheeple, and the apocalypse is just getting started.
Created at Soho Theatre’s Cabaret & Drag lab and developed with funding from Arts Council England, Ram of God was set to debut as a stage show at Brighton fringe in May 2020. When coronavirus put a stop to live performances, Stockholm fringe asked international artists for digital shows instead. Rather than a filmed performance the show emerged as a theatrical film.
With influences from seventies horror to cult documentaries, music videos and cereal adverts, the film is a playful takedown of masculinity and its shadowy cheerleaders and joyfully tackles the different possibilities and limitations of translating theatre to screen.
Screened at Stockholm, Brighton and Melbourne fringes 2020; Living Record Festival, Leicester Comedy Festival and Wellington fringe 2021.
Awards: OffFest nomination from OffWestEnd, semi finalist at the Alternative Film Festival: Best Comedy and Best Actress, special mention from the LA Underground Film Festival.
***** review by A Younger Theatre
The film is available to watch here.
Ram of God the live show debuted at Brighton fringe in May 2021, and returned in 2022 to the Spiegeltent Bosco theatre, before a full run at Edinburgh fringe with Assembly (Roxy Downstairs), VAULT festival and Camden People’s Theatre in 2023.
Praise be to Ram.
Trapped in a tower in a world of pink, a YouTuber princess is given a box and told never to open it because it contains all the evils of the universe. Isolated from the world, she is plagued by weird, sexual dreams of blue and the unsettling idea that perhaps there could be more....
Mixing classical references from Greek mythology and fairytales with the modern world of Instagram, pop music & #MeToo, Drink Your Pink explores the limitations of strict gender constructs, and the frustration of being confined in a box too small.
Drink Your Pink was first performed as part of Camden People’s Theatre’s feminist theatre festival Calm Down Dear in June 2019 and has now been developed into a film with public funding from Arts Council England, returning to premiere at Calm Down, Dear before a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2022. Now available online here.
Dream job, huge fanbase, and in a committed relationship with a beefy dancing bear. Everything was going right for the bearded lady, until her secret came out…
A coming of age fairytale about the bearded lady who ran away from the circus and embarked on a voyage transcending time, space and sex, her struggles to understand the societal limits on her gender and the eventual acceptance of herself as a woman.
Appropriating Leonardos from da Vinci to DiCaprio, a gender bending journey and joyful Fuck You to a world that asks people to hide or change who they are.
‘Tip top show’ - Henning Wehn
‘Hilarious but equally thought-provoking, it’s funny and deep in the best combination.’ - The Brighton Blogger
'A real hidden gem... The writing has a fierce imagination and a very winning performance from van der Beek mixing, as it does comedy, singing and high drama.’ - Stephen Carlin
'At times enchanting, funny, joyous, and delightful, but there is also drama and stark tragedy – and just the right amount of bawdiness. Original and captivating, I highly recommend.' - Keith Prince
The show was first performed at Camden People's Theatre in 2018, and went on to Dumfries Big Burns Supper, Brighton fringe and a full run at the Edinburgh fringe with Gilded Balloon. In January 2020, headhunted by producer Chris Dodd, the bearded lady travelled half way across the world for Perth fringe, performing in four venues, including her first circus tent (Casa Mondo, Yagan Square). Her last live performance was at VAULT festival in London where her dreams were cut short when she contracted a deadly virus and was forced to quarantine at home.
As well as the live show, the character’s autobiography is available to buy from all good bookshops. Buy yours from this one here now.
One yolk's quest to make it in a human world. A dynamic voyage with feminist undertones: the egg is at once powerful and powerless, comedic and majestic. The yolk emerges from the shell, at first timid and wary, before becoming glorious, and ultimately angry at its fate: fried in a pan. Born androgynous, she is quickly gendered by the world she has hatched into.
Surprising, fantastical and bold, a coming of age journey that tackles age-old questions like ‘What came first?’
'Delightful and disorientating... a dizzying chain of events, played out with obvious joy' - Plays To See
Egg is a show that hatched from an egg costume. While working for the Royal Society for the Pursuit of Lovebirds (RSPLB: amateur birdwatching society and expert dating agency) I mentioned I'd always wanted to be an egg on legs. They contacted artist Tim Spooner, and my dream became a reality. After developing into a cabaret act I was convinced of the potential for a full length show.
Egg has been to: Camden People's Theatre as part of their SPRINT festival 2016 and then again in 2017; Winner of the Morley College Edinburgh prize 2016; Impfest at Hornsey Town Hall Arts Centre 2016 and a full run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as part of PBH's Free Fringe.
Egg as a cabaret act has performed at: Duckie at Royal Vauxhall Tavern, FLESH Hull, CUNTemporary at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club; for Rueben Kaye at the Cockpit Theatre; Lewisham People’s Day, Theatre Mono at The Coach & Horses; Shoreditch House; the Salon Collective; Cossall Arts Cabaret; Properganda, The Breakfast Club, as well as Glastonbury, Wilderness and Bestival festivals.
‘The meaning of life is that it stops.’
Franz Kafka
‘When you’re 30 dark circles appear under your eyes and fine lines and wrinkles begin to show.’
Anti-ageing wrinkle cream advert
A woman stands on the brink of a life she is failing at and a death she is also failing at. ‘To be or not to be?’ is the question. Through one doorway she dies, only to have failed at life, through the other, she lives, only to have failed at death. Or she could have succeeded at life and death respectively; I suppose it depends which way you look at it.
A show about show, performance and the ego: an existential crisis told through a variety of mediums including opera, clowning and conceptual dance.
My Death was first performed at The Rag Factory, just off Brick Lane, and then at Camden People's Theatre as part of their SPRINT festival 2015. In January 2018 it had a short run at The Pleasance in London.
Interview for online theatre magazine The New Current:
Hey Theodora, thanks for talking to TNC, how have things been going?
Hectic but exciting! The jigsaw is gradually taking shape...
How does it feel to be part of CPT Sprint 2015?
Very special as it’s the first festival I’ve been in with a solo piece. I’ve always loved CPT as a venue - it has a collaborative ethos which makes you feel welcomed and inspired.
Any finishing touches?
Always! There are a million more ideas I want to try out. I’m particularly excited about some ‘Moon Shoes’ I just won on eBay, that I’m going to use for my ghost scene: they let you bounce as you walk. I’ll need to practise walking in them so I can sing at the same time. I will have a big skirt and restricted vision, so I hope I can make it work; though either way it will be entertaining. I want to develop this piece a lot, and getting it out there in front of this audience is an important step on the journey, not the final one. I’m excited to see how people are going to react.
What has been the biggest challenge you've faced putting your new show together?
In writing the show I tried not to let anything get in the way of my imagination, silly little things like not being able to sing opera or speak Russian - so when it was written there were a few things I needed to learn how to do. I train with experts in different things to get as good as I can in that area. My Technical Director Andrey Kastelmacher’s first language is Russian, so he translated and helped me with the pronunciation. The tap dance: I definitely still need to work on!
Do you ever get nervous when you're bringing your work to audiences?
The moment before I go on stage is always the same: my whole body’s shaking and I’m thinking ‘Why do I do this?’ But when I get on stage there’s this enormous sense of release and enjoyment. When it’s your own work you’ve only got yourself to rely on or let down and you’re just there, having an interaction with the audience. I’m used to live, improvised events so I’ve had to embrace the idea that things will go wrong and that’s okay, it’s part of it, and it’s what gives those performances their renegade edge. When you have no time to think and you just have to open your mouth and say something, that thing can turn out to be outrageous or inappropriate. You never know until it’s too late. I try to retain that element of danger because the audience can tell and the liveness is part of the magic of any theatre.
Has it been surprising to get the type of reaction you've gotten for your work?
It sounds stupid but the laughter always catches me by surprise. Even though I’m trying to make people laugh, my characters all take themselves very seriously, so the first time I do something in front of an audience I always get caught out by it.
Tell me a little bit about My Death, how did it the show come about?
My Death is about a woman who thinks that she’s failing at life and so decides to die, only to discover that she’s not very good at that either. I describe it as an existential crisis told through a variety of performance styles including opera, puppetry and conceptual dance. In this sense it is a show about show, performance and the ego: a mockery of the conviction every one of us has that the world revolves around us.
It came about as I was approaching my 30th birthday, with the received sense of impending doom that arrives along with it: there was an advert a few years ago for anti-ageing wrinkle cream with the line ‘When you’re 30 dark circles appear under your eyes and fine lines and wrinkles begin to show.’ It was at the same time absurd and terrifying. There is the sense that by the time you reach 30 you’re supposed to have achieved something or made something of yourself. I found it funny the way we’ve made this arbitrary milestone and treat it with such authority. As my character reasons when she decides to end her life: ‘After all, I was near 30: it was time to go’.
It’s become increasingly possible in this technological age to carefully structure the image you present to the world. So much information is, or can be readily available: our online profiles are the advertisements of ourselves, the brand of the person we want to project. My Death is a reaction to that, a parody of the lengths people go to to appear a certain way.
What was the main inspiration behind your new play?
I always loved something Kafka said when he described all his writing as the childish desire to imagine his own funeral and see how sorry people were that he had gone - the whole show is a playful representation of this kind of Pyrrhic Victory. A sad clown that wastes their life uploading smiling images of themself to Facebook so that people will see how happy they are, despite this process making them perpetually sad.
When did you realise you wanted to create theatre?
When I was little I used to sit in the bath for hours acting out stories with all the different characters. It’s the best place to do it because you can use the water to change your hair and the bubbles can be used to make beards and fancy clothes. It was a race against time before the bubbles popped and the water went cold. That’s probably when I knew...
What has been the most valuable lesson you've learned so far?
Just to leap in and do it. Any problem can be worked out while you’re doing it. And if you just sit around thinking about doing it, you’ll only end up with thoughts that no-one else will ever know about.
Who have been your biggest inspirations?
A long history of clowns - the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Blackadder, Chris Morris, Alan Partridge, Miranda July, Amy Poehler and Sacha Baron Cohen.
But also, in another way, people who meticulously construct their public image and take themselves very seriously: Vladimir Putin, Kim Kardashian, Kim Jong Un. People who take loads of selfies of themselves pouting.
Do you have a favourite theatre quote?
Artaud said ‘We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theatre has been created to teach us that first of all.’
And finally what do you hope people will take away from your new play?
The central message is quite simple - don’t panic about what’s expected of you or what you think you should be, just worry about who you actually are. It would be nice if no-one still cared what sexuality other people were or what they want to wear, for example… but all over the world people are still being persecuted for being gay or wanting to wear trousers if they are girls or dresses if they are boys. That’s crazy! I hope My Death in some small way gets them to think about that.
During the covid lockdown, I joined 3p film club, created by comedian Talal Karkouti. Each week we got a one word prompt and made a film along that theme, and sometimes there was an additional challenge like ‘use no human actors’ or ‘only have one word in your script’. 3p refers to 3 pages because each film should be no more than 3 minutes (in film 1 page of script roughly equals a minute). Then we screened the films together and asked questions.
3p includes professional filmmakers, actors, animators, directors, composers and producers, as well as people who don’t work in the creative industries.
When the lockdown ended I continued making short films, usually taking a piece of music as inspiration.
Awards and film festivals: No One Cares, winner Best Dance Film; and My Beautiful House semi-finalist Best Sci-fi/fantasy at the Alternative Film Festival Winter edition 2020, Toronto. Allons-y - Let’s Go, official selection at Bad Film Fest 2022.
What started as an adhoc experiment with a video camera quickly became a multi-faceted project, with filmed content and live shows, in which the audience become the live studio audience. We collaborate with over 30 artists to create immersive theatrical experiences, and Emilia Crimble and Susan have become stars in their own rights, presenting club nights and award ceremonies all over the world.
You can follow Emilia on Twitter @emiliacrimble, or make friends with her on Facebook.
Scribble Pie is an informal performance space where artists and non artists can show work they've made or are in the process of making. Each presentation takes no more than ten minutes, and there are breaks in between.
It all started in the living room of our trendy but windowless warehouse. I had lots of notebooks filled with ideas that I realised no one would ever get to hear, and I knew my friends had the same. I wanted to create a platform for those ideas to get heard. At university I had been to lots of poetry nights, theatre shows and music gigs and discovered that mostly the same people turned up to their respective cliques. My housemates came from different spheres - animation, film, theatre, music and art.
Scribble Pie's aim is to bring all these things together to give audiences an array of insights into worlds that might not be normal or accessible for them, which could inspire them in new ways and bring about new collaborations. It is also a place where people in professions that are not entertainment or performance can explain what they do - we've hosted advertising executives, geography teachers, tech start-up CEOs, chefs, data scientists and board games experts.
The Pie quickly became popular because it was an odd night that gave people unexpected experiences. We grew too big for the living room and moved to Stoke Newington International Airport, which in case you haven't heard of it, was an arts venue, not an actual airport. We moved to The Fox & Phoenix in Finsbury Park, then The Others in Stoke Newington, before finding our home at the iconic Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club.
Scribble Pie happens every so often and is run by myself and Amar Chadha Patel, with delicious homemade Indian food by PumYum. Follow us on Facebook or Instagram for notifications about the next event, or contact me here to ask to show work.
Past contributors include: Posey Mehta, Mikey Please, Roxy Velvet, Studio Yes, Jessi Baker - founder of Provenance, Matt Lees from Shut Up & Sit Down, Nadine Wild-Palmer, Kheski Khobler, Khushi & Strong Asian Mothers, Dan Ojari from Parabella Studios, Arthur Carabott, Robyn Herfellow with The Chelsea Nonsense Choir, Cynthia Wild, Robin & Partridge, Jane English, Verity Standen, Ellie Showering, Jenny Minton, Anna Rose Kerr, Robert Walker, Mila Falls, Camilla Brown, Jonny Rankin and Mike Ruane from the Guardian, Ross Blake, Natalie Sharp/ Lone Taxidermist, Josh Stadlen, Effie Pappa, Kyle Jon Shephard, The Purple Ladies, Douglas Walker, Kavi Appadoo, The RSPLB, Elena Saurel, Pip’s Jukebox, Mawaan Rizwan, Kathleen Cassidy, Mirror Tarot by Suki Ferguson, Sarah Meiklejon, Laurie Innes, Misha Vertkin, Sheldon Dee, Kristian Andrews, Portia Winters, Anne Charlotte Morgenstein from Olio, Ben Giubarelli, Sam Fink, Mark Roy Tsai, Andrew Leigh Syers, Emergent Behaviour, The Intimate Strangers, Parminder Chadha, Tairi Jõe, James O’Donahue, Bea Holland, Iris Columb, Chips for the Poor and Saban Kazim.