EDINBURGH 2023: Cerys Bradley Q&A

BWW caught up with Cerys Bradley to chat about bringing Not Overthinking Things 2019 to the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Tell us a bit about Not Overthinking Things 2019.

Not Overthinking Things 2019 is not about my parents’ divorce. It is a chaos birthday party about gender, autism and intrusive thoughts that celebrates always being worried about what everybody else thinks about you all the time. It has nothing to do with relationships ending or families breaking apart or the future and how we’re all going to die one day. It is a happy show were we just have a nice time and there are balloons.

It’s a very interactive show, there’s lots of opportunities for audience participation and sweets and prizes and toys and everything is very fast so that we all have a nice time and don’t think about how, ultimately, each and every one of us is a terrible person who has made very many mistakes but it’s ok because there’s cake.

I came to your show in 2022 and was extremely impressed with how gently the audience participation was carried out (and entirely optional), why is this approach important to you?

I like interacting with my audience. I love performing live and creating a show that is unique to that time and place and giving people an experience that no one else will get but I have seen a lot of bad audience interaction in shows.

I have also been in a lot of performer conversations where people complained about how their audience messed up a bit or interrupted the show and ruined it and I’ve been an audience member doing audience participation spending the whole time thinking “what the hell do you want from me?” and I just think that it’s unfair to expect people to know the rules if they haven’t been told them.

So, when I made Sportsperson last year, my director (Joz Norris) and I spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the audience participation really, really clear. It had to be entirely optional because if the participator isn’t enjoying it, no one else can really enjoy it either (and I am not about everybody having a good time at one person’s expense). One of my favourite audience reviews from last year was a person who told me they usually avoid audience participation but, in Sportsperson, they actually volunteered to do it because they wanted to be a part of the show.

Not Overthinking Things 2019 is very audience participation heavy again but I have taken a slightly different approach. Not everybody loved my style of audience participation last year and some people thought it was too nice, so in this show I am playing with that. My character is a lot more intense this year and it’s been fun to try and retain all of the elements of the audience participation where it is still optional and encouraging whilst being a more antagonist character on stage.

Who else is involved in the creative process?

Not Overthinking Things 2019 is directed by Elf Lyons. She has helped me to work out what I really want to say with the show and why and also how and when and in what order. In my workshops with her, we have also spent a lot of time thinking about movement and staging. This is something that I really pushed myself to try for the first time with my last show and so it’s been fun (and hard) to try to go further this year and be more ambitious.

The show is produced by Ingenious Fools and my producer Susanna is very supportive. She, essentially, runs the show – booking in all my previews and coordinating everybody. She takes a lot of care to make sure that everything is cohesive, making sure that the poster and the show description sell the show and that it’s in the right kinds of venues. I love working with her because I am bad at admin and she is good at it but I also think she’s more ambitious than I am and so I’m doing more and bigger shows than I think I would have dared book for myself and I’ve gotten a lot out of that in terms of the development of the show.

Izzie Purcell is my designer and he created my poster which is a delight. I think it really captures how messy Not Overthinking Things 2019 is and I often look at it when I’m writing so that I can hold the vibe that I want in my mind.

My props this year are being made by Amy Greaves. She’s very talented and we have had several excellent planning sessions where she’s come up with all these amazing looking machines. One of the first ideas I had for the show was a prop and it’s become a crucial part of the main message of the show. I’ve really enjoyed working with Amy because her approach is not just “how can I make this work?” but “how does this mechanism emphasise or detract from the message of the show?” so the prop becomes not just a fun add on but also a joke and a symbol and a thousand other things that make it really integral to the show.

Who would you like to come and see you?

Well, everybody but particularly wealthy benefactors who want to fund some kind of post fringe tour.

I’ve had a lot of fun WIP’ing the show and have had the most fun with queer and neurodiverse audiences who, probably, get more of the jokes. So that’s who I’d like to come see the show. Like, if it is specifically targeted at anyone, it’s specifically targeted at autistic genderqueers whose parents are divorced and who have positive relationships with their family, sure, but don’t really fit in because they’re the only one who isn’t “normal”. But I really think the show has broad appeal. If you like drag, clowning, party games, having things thrown at you, dad jokes, tight fives about commuter towns… then you will enjoy at least a small part of the show.

What is the significance of the Arts Council funding that helped developed this show?

Unfortunately, money just makes it easier to make art. With the grant we received from ACE, we have been able to pay people for more of their time, try things even if they don’t work, and be more ambitious with things like props and venues in a way that I couldn’t, personally, financially risk.

We’re also making another zine this year, Queer Minds, it’s about people’s experience of neurodiversity and queerness and exploring their relationship. Hana Ayoob, who is a fantastic artist and maker, has been running workshops for us and the participants of those workshops have made some beautiful art. Without this funding, we wouldn’t be able to run the workshops or print the zine but, with it, we can give the zine away for free to audience members which spreads our message a lot wider and more fairly.

The funding is also supporting another project Boyz Nite. Boyz Nite is a night for trans men, transmasc, butch non-binary and drag performers. It is a celebration of trans art and masculinity and a space to explore gender and queerness. We’ve had some phenomenal shows and the ACE funding allows Susanna and I to pay people properly and cover expenses. Without it, we wouldn’t have the support that we need to run the show in a way that is fair for audiences and performers.

This year I was also a recipient of the Keep It Fringe Fund, which I am beyond grateful for. With that money, I’ve been able to pay for a closed captioner and a BSL interpreter so that I can have three shows that are accessible to D/deaf and hard of hearing audience members. It is really important that shows are accessible to everyone and that can be expensive so this money and the Arts Council funding are helping me to do that.

Photo credit: Steve Ullathorne

Tickets available here: 

Sponsored content

To post a comment, you must register and login.