5th November 2021 Newsletter / Tickets for autumn shows

Hello you lot.

This year has been about getting back into being a theatrical-comedy horse with five different live shows packed into various suitcases and ready to go

After weeks away from home, eating too much and washing too little, all I want for Christmas is some homemade hay and a newly-plaited tail. But first…

Autumn/Winter 2021 Shows

I’m involved in three different productions for the last two months of 2021. We are doing Lord God – The Musical by Philip Reeve and Brian Mitchell for 6 nights at The Lantern Theatre in Brighton this November.

TROT ME TO THE TRAILER AND TICKETS

THEN Wife On Earth, my solo character comedy/stand up show in a double bill with Ben Moor’s ‘Who Here’s Lost?’ in Aldershot on December 16th 2021

ALL ABOARD FOR ALDERSHOT

and an extract of Wife On Earth for two nights at Cosmic Shamble’s Networks’ ‘Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People’ at Kings Place on December 17th and 18th.

CANTER TO THE CURIOUS

Stable

In March 2020 Wife On Earth – The Live Show got sidelined and instead I made a film for children and recorded series 3 of my Wife On Earth Podcast. The star of the podcast (and stage show) is repressed housewife Celia Jesson, based on the leading lady in the film Brief Encounter.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? SHOW ME PLEASE, IN REVIEW FORM.

I thought I’d be able to do the same show once things started up again, but things had changed in 18 months.

Celia and I had both got older. And…

Unstable

We both became peri-menopausal, my character and I, both losing some of our marbles, just at the time we need them the most, and formerly-delightful Celia became possessed with an angrier incarnation.

She hadn’t wanted to change.

Celia looked nearly the same, maybe a bit porkier. But she had changed. After husband Fred took up ukulele during all the lockdowns, Celia became grumpy and angrier. Celia, a wasp in a cardigan.

I too, am generally quite angry these days. But I also find some elements of anger very funny indeed, which makes me a terrible friend. Annoyance and irritation is a particularly fine seam.

Neigh.

Sometimes, nay often, I am angry for no good reason except for hormones. It’s like being a teenager again, who suddenly thinks everything is stupid, until the unprovoked fury quickly dissipates and you’re left having to eat an ice-cream as miserably as possible, even though you’re inwardly delighted, to make the transition look marginally less nuts.

Oh, pretending to be normal. Here we go again. I’ve had to add bits into my show where I let off steam, to cover up the peri-menopause. There’s a section about shit audition requests for actresses. And a guide on partner’s habits, that used to be endearing and are now annoying. And a passionate celebration of teenage hormones with Morwenna Wade’s ridiculous impression of punk-era Andy Partridge out of XTC.

I WANT TO SEE THIS. 

And another thing.

I doodled this image above with some pots of handmade ink, (Avocado stone ink and Oak Gall ink), made by my friend Thomas Barwick in Cornwall.  It’s so beautiful to draw with. It looks really light at first, then it dries and gets darker and darker and changes colour. In fact, if anyone wants to get me some more for Christmas, I’m running out of both.

TAKE ME TO THOMAS BARWICK’S INK SHOP PLEASE. IT SOUNDS CHARMING

Doodles

I’ll be bearing Programmes at the Wife On Earth Show and taking orders for bespoke drawn Greetings card designs and homemade drawing presents. I just thought of that. Feel free to remind me of it, because I will have forgotten by then.I could even do you a doodle with Thomas Barwick’s ink and a hair from a creature’s tail.

(Here are some programmes I made, I’ll be updating them for the December shows. Here is a review of this one in October to give you an idea of the double bill with Ben Moor. This programme drawing of me looking angry is by Pete Fowler, my old friend from Falmouth Art School (when it was tiny, just that site that’s a listed building and another annexe near the Jacob’s Ladder Inn, where I worked as a barmaid for years and that weird sculpture building down towards Trago’s where we did some drawing once, for some reason).

For anyone who is bored of looking at screens, here’s the box office number for West End Centre, Aldershot.

Jo