Drama school didn't prepare me for how much of my career would be spent in Floor Time.

 

We have 90 minutes left of precious, precious, £15-an-hour subsidised rehearsal space before embarking on tour, and still, it is Floor Time.

 

A few feet away, Jess is laying opposite on the rickety floor of the Scottish-Protestant-Church-Turned-Performance-Space, both of us staring at the cobwebs laced between stained-glass windows older than we are. This is a kindness; we both know Floor Time is just for me.

 

SNOLIGOSTER (a show you should pause reading and book tickets to right this very moment) is the piece I desperately tried not to write. I have seen enough well-intentioned, traumatised theatremakers proclaim 'my art is my therapy' and then pass that trauma along to their audiences to know that some stories are not for sharing forcibly to a captive audience.

 

I also didn't particularly want to write a show about my childhood-long forced relationship with the Southern Baptist Convention----similar to how I've never had a hankering to write a show about my worst ex. My ego chanted, I don't know that person. We don't talk anymore.

 

They have nothing to do with me.

 

But if they don't...

 

why is everything I write to avoid writing about my cataclysmic former relationship with Jesus kind of shit?

 

and why can't I go through a Sunday without eating an entire sleeve of biscuits, or - less Bridget-Jones-esque - picking the calluses from my feet until there's no skin left?

 

and why am I lying on the floor when I should be scuttling across the stage?

 

RADA would be so disappointed if they could see me now.

 

I bet Cate Blanchett doesn't need floor time.

 

But I am not Cate Blanchett. I am Amanda Grace, with stories to tell that I’m sure Cate Blanchett would embrace, unphased, with her wonderful, warm, smiling eyes - stories that still make me want to hurl a little bit every time I tell them, but are also undeniably funny, and enchantingly strange, and share with truth social phenomena we need more than ever to understand if we are serious about dismantling their power over us.

 

It’s sort of traditional wisdom in acting school that ‘if you haven’t dealt with it offstage, you shouldn’t bring it onstage’, but as a long-term mad person with years of experience in various forms of therapy (not to brag), I’d grown to see this as a bit of a simplification. What about those things that are embedded in our cells, that will be whispering to us through our entire lives, regardless of how much we’ve processed them? What if we could make friends with them just enough to allow others to inspect them, and question them, and challenge them?

 

I will never be able to walk into a Southern Baptist church and rage at the congregation for their lack of accountability. That would be dangerous. But if me raging a layer removed as a swamp monster helps others keep an eye on their own community for ways we’re letting young people raised in alt-right pipelines down in the name of family autonomy… that would be…. Something.

 

Some form of redemption.

 

So I’ve come to the conclusion that, if telling these stories in safe ways can help us understand each other and take small steps to true inter-community transformative justice, then Floor Time is a very small trade. It may not be glamorous, but it is a chance to give back care and autonomy in those moments we choose, as artists, to bring our trauma into the work.

 

It’s from this philosophical journey that I’d like to present to you

A Non-Exhaustive Ethics of Trauma Girly Theatre.

 

1. ‘Hard’ is okay. ‘Harmful’ is not.

 

First things first: Trauma Girly Theatre is only a practice you should be engaging with if you can rationally, and without external (or internal) pressure, assess your practice’s benefits and harm to you. Yelling ‘I don’t want to do this’ in discomfort whilst feeling deeply fulfilled is a common post-rehearsal cleansing exercise for me, but I have yet to descend into any truly destructive spirals. The second that happens, it’s time out for me. If you struggle to find the line, it will help to have trusted creative collaborators and loved ones monitor your behaviour throughout the project, with veto power for any activity that crosses into danger territory.

 

1. It is up to the Trauma Girly whether they tell Trauma Girly stories or not.

 

This one has always felt obvious, but I’ve been in rooms where directors unaffected by the trauma their chosen script re-enacts throw hissy fits to end all hissy fits when their trauma-experienced actors professionally but firmly refuse to engage with the material because their consent wasn’t sought in its selection. This might happen in a drama school, where shows are selected for the ‘chops’ they allow students to show off, or it might take place in an audition where actors aren’t well informed of side material or asked for their personal boundaries ahead of entering the room. In any case, asking someone to tell a story they don’t want to tell is bad and also a massive knob move. Don’t do it.

 

1. Lean into the non-universal experiences.

 

Lots of tiny flecks of traumatic evangelist glitter have become embedded in SNOLIGOSTER as comic relief. This might seem counter-intuitive to the non-traumatised, but the fact that things that were once normal and horrifying to me are so absurd in my present context - absurd enough for audiences of strangers to roar at - does a great bit of healing to the lizard brain part of me that still fears them. This is especially convenient given the general capacity of specific storytelling to facilitate universal catharsis: very few of us have three potential fathers, but more of us than is statistically likely have dressed in denim dungarees for a Mamma Mia! hen do. The layer of removal the specificity of my experience gives audiences makes them feel safe enough to actively investigate the story, and it becomes something they take ownership over as well.

 

1. Proportion the story by what’s useful to the audience - not what’s moving to you.

 

In the end, all theatre should belong to its audience. When working with any kind of biographical material, it matters literally zero amount how you experienced the thing you’re sharing. The only thing that matters is how the audience should experience it.

 

Some of the most profound experiences I had growing up in Florida are allotted a single sentence in SNOLIGOSTER. These bits are too niche to offer any room for growth to UK audiences, or outside the scope of the specific themes of the show.

 

Jess knows that one of the heaviest lines in the show for me is, ‘And I even learned how to chew loud enough to block out the parts of the dinner when we all take bets on when Jesus is coming back’, for the same reasons that I will never eat a fancy Thanksgiving meal ever again. We wanted to include it for a slight provocation - what will audiences assume about this line? Will they glaze over it entirely? - but it doesn’t matter to the exploration at large, which is what a strict ideological upbringings in the unique sociopolitical cultures prepare us to do, including at home here in the UK. Focusing in too deeply on what I am learning from my experiences will prevent the audience from going on their own journeys. It also tends to make a show a bit of an After School Special, and no one wants that.

 

1. Rest is part of the work.

 

The experience of actually staging the SNOLIGOSTER Summer Tour has been much less psychologically demanding than the inbuilt dread that responds to any vague suggestion of God or Jesus or Where I’m From Originally prepared me for, and in that way, it’s been much less of an ask to just do the work than it was to anticipate doing the work.

That said, the work is still exhausting. Floor Time remains necessary. And I’ve found that I often get the best ideas for what the tour needs to be better when I’m sitting in the silence, or doing something totally unrelated. When the pressure of making it what it should be ebbs away, all that’s left is the shoreline of what it is.

 

My former MFA course leader and current friend Teresa Brayshaw once told me during my thesis preparation, ‘It’s all the work.’ The surprise joy of Insomnia Cookies in Manchester is the work. The calling my partner at home in London and listening to experiences I’m completely separate from is the work. The making friendship bracelets and thank you cards is the work. The writing this is the work.

 

These days, when working on Trauma Girly Theatre projects, I try to follow my attention as it moves instead of admonishing it, because it always seems to focus on the next thing that takes me back to the story once more. Along the way, I find new perspective, or energy, or enthusiasm, and that then makes the story - and me - stronger.

 

1. Both sides of the stage should be trauma-informed.

 

So I’m making space for myself to breathe and take breaks. Fantastic. Have I made that space for the audience? Have I allowed them the same explicit consent to engage with the material that I demand? If I can stim during a scene and make it into a character choice, can they stim in the house and trust I won’t break character to disparage them?

 

From day dot of your Trauma Girly Theatre Project, your team should ask: How are we caring for ourselves? And follow that question promptly with: How are we caring for our audience? Make the rules of engagement for all parties as clear as possible, so people can make informed choices about where they fit in your story.

 

1. Don’t stop healing offstage.

 

SNOLIGOSTER has, of course, been an incredibly healing piece to work on, but I didn’t create it as an avenue to heal. I created it to offer perspective I hoped might help the community, and to meet the challenges of this phase in my artistic career: so, the same reasons I’d do any non-Trauma-Girly Theatre.

 

Going to rehearsal and Being Brave doesn’t excuse me from reading my deconstruction resources, or doing my breathwork, or taking my medication. Where touring interferes with these things, it’s my job to be a Professional™ and find room for them in my day. It’s all well and good painting myself green and doing a bit of dark comedy about the swamp, but if I’m slipping on the things that keep me well enough to go to the grocery store or clean my flat, that dark comedy quickly becomes reality.

 

To that note:

 

1. It’s not that serious.

 

The thing about Trauma Girly Theatre is that it isn’t the trauma. Life is so short. If you’re living with the aftershocks of trauma, it can feel even shorter. I so believe in the power of theatre to change lives—but Jess and I are under no delusion that we’re doing open-heart surgery every night. At the most generous and hopeful, we’re doing open-mind surgery- and there’s plenty of room in that operating room for laughter, and a cheeky bev, and quiet,

and stillness,

and Floor Time.

 

This isn’t the thing that matters.

This thing only matters because it is helping us relate to each other.

We are the things that matter.

 

To me, the process of making SNOLIGOSTER has been less of a healing from what mattered during my trauma, and more of an affirmation of the beautiful things that I knew should matter - that we have the choice to make matter to ourselves and our communities.

 

I hope making that choice is a freedom you take full advantage of. I hope it empowers you.

If it heals you along the way, even better.

 

I hope you insist upon telling stories that matter in ways that are safe.

 

And I so hope you get the chance to join us in the swamp.

 

 

SNOLIGOSTER shows at Alphabetti Theatre on the 7th and 8th of August from 7.30 p.m. Sliding-scale tickets are available here.