I recently read a quote by Stephen Sondheim, “When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you’ve written.”

This idea resonated with me because it articulates something I’ve always struggled to describe without sounding pretentious.

I’ve always dreaded the question ‘Why do you want to make theatre?’ I’ve dreaded it because whenever I open my mouth to answer I never do it justice. There is definitely a market for intellectualising an audience's experience of seeing a live performance, but I’m more interested in the soul of a piece of work, and how a devising process or script can help communicate it. And in turn how a piece of theatre can directly affect how we feel.

Someone far more adept at describing this ambiguous sentiment is Maya Angelou. She once said,

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

The reason I want to make theatre is because I want to learn best how to make people feel through telling stories. There are strong ties between this and design communication for me. They are different industries and yet rely on the same techniques of focusing on the experience of an audience. Will an audience relate, reject or feel rejuvenated by a piece of work you put out into the world?

We have a choice about the messages that we convey as creatives – that’s where the magic lies for me.

Second Person Narrative, Arcola Theatre 2020

Devising theatre and design

Spoken word poetry.