EDINBURGH 2019: MADAME OVARY Q&A

BWW catches up with Rosa Hesmondhalgh to chat about bringing Madame Ovary to the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Tell us a bit about Madame Ovary

Madame Ovary is a one woman show, based on my real life experience of ovarian cancer, from diagnosis and kind of all the way up to present day. I started writing the bones of it in blog form from my hospital bed, and decided to turn it into a play when I got the all-clear.

What was the inspiration for the play?

I'd started writing my story as a way to update people with my situation. I enjoyed writing it like a story, detailing characters, snatched conversations, my treatment and the people I met. But privately I was also writing diary entries about how it all felt, poems, lists of all the things that had changed. Turning it all into a play was a way to collate all of these different thoughts and feelings into one place. I'd finished drama school a few months before diagnosis, and so a play felt like the right medium.

Why do you think it's an important story to tell?

I honestly didn't know that a twenty-three year old could get cancer. Let alone how that feels. I would love to tell people how it feels. I think whilst we see cancer fairly often in the mainstream media - we only see a certain side of it. I want to show the before, the after, the during. The laughs that you might not realise are there, and the tears that you may not see. There's such a deep dive to be had there. I'd love to do that dive and take people with me.

Who do you think should come and see it?

Not my ex boyfriends. Definitely not my ex boyfriends.

I think anyone who has ever been affected by cancer - 1 in 2 of us apparently - should come and see it. If that's been you in the chemotherapy chair, or a friend or family member - I want people to come and see it and feel as if I'm talking directly to them about my story. So people can take validation from the similarities, and learn something new from the differences, maybe. But also this is a story for anyone who's been struggling to know what story to tell - whether you're fresh out of uni wondering what you're actually meant to be doing, or going on Tinder dates because you want someone to watch Chernobyl with, or doing yoga videos because the gym scares the bejeezus out of you. I hope everyone could take something from it.

What do you hope audiences take away from the show?

I hope they leave with a new perspective on a cancer narrative. I hope people have a laugh, actually. I really do believe that if we laugh at a difficult topic, we can begin to understand it. I think that's important. I hope they take away that love is genuinely the thing. It is actually all you need. The Beatles wouldn't lie about stuff like that.

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/madame-ovary

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