EDINBURGH 2023: Please Love Me Guest Blog

Clementine Bogg-Hargroves and Zoe Barnes - creators of Please Love Me, on how they balance writing and devising theatre that incorporates personal experience with fictionalised narratives.

We’re Clem and Zoey, creators of Please Love Me, which will be premiering in Edinburgh this summer. The show is mostly autobiographical, referencing Clem’s younger years when she was a bit of a nightmare to be honest. 

Clem: I find writing about my own life less daunting than making up fictional characters, so autobiographical scripts have been my go-to so far. Coming from a performance background rather than a writing background has made me doubt my legitimacy as a ‘writer’ in the past. Maybe now that I have two shows under my belt (Please Love Me and our last show SKANK), I can finally own the title. 

It’s obvious to say that putting your personal and private experiences on stage is a vulnerable thing to do. For me, I’m the sort of gal who dives in at the deep end, so brazenly creating a pole dance about the surgical abortion I had when I was a teenager is almost just another day at the office! Straying away from the real events and making them into a theatrical story with structure and clarity is where Zoey comes in.

Zoey: I’m the Clarity Police! Seeing as I’m outside of the real events, I can laser my way through the unnecessary details and treat the script like, well, a show, rather than a transcript. The process includes things like drawing a wiggly “story arc” line and plotting the events on the line so that we know where the peaks and troughs of the story are. Saying “what if we combine these two characters into one person - does that make it easier for an audience to digest quickly?” And the classic “sorry babe but that’s really boring, let’s cut it!”

Clem: Ooh we do love a cut! Yeah, I think it’s about making those bold choices so that your life is the inspiration for a piece of art, not an exercise for the ego. 

Zoey: Although with this show, the ego is actually pretty important haha, Clem is literally standing on stage and asking the audience to please love her and give her random rounds of applause.

Clem: It’s an exaggerated version of myself, I don’t just stand up in restaurants and take a bow.

I think it’s important when you’re writing about your own life to collaborate and get mates in to see the work or read the script and tell you straight whether or not it makes any sense. Then be open and humble enough to genuinely take that feedback on board. Like when we wrote a reprise of the main song for the ending, asking in a tongue in cheek way for the audience to follow us on social media and telling them how much debt we’re in, and our friends universally hated it! They said it cheapened an otherwise moving ending and we had to just cut it, even though we loved it.

Zoey: Yeah, we thought they would sing along to the chorus and have a jolly old time! No one sang along. 

It’s well worth writing and performing your own story because the audience can invest in the character so much more deeply. When watching solo shows, I always think - I want to know your deepest, darkest secrets. I want to see your vulnerability. We have not shied away from any of that whilst making this show! Clem really leaves it all out on the floor, and I think you will fall in love with her. Even just a little bit.

Clem: Please?

Please Love Me will be performed at 8.20pm in Pleasance Dome (Ace Dome) from 2nd – 26th August (Not 7th, 14th or 21st)

Booking link: https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/please-love-me

Photo credit: Liam Rigby

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