Something to Say
Three new radio plays by disabled writers
During the 2020 lockdown, we ran a development project in partnership with Theatre Gu Leor, called Something to Say | Rudeigin ri Ràdh, to amplify the voices of people seldom heard in radio drama. That project was divided into two strands: Writer Development and Writer Commissions.
In October 2020, BOP launched the Writer Commissions strand: three commissions for brand new 15 minute radio plays. The specific details of the call out were:
- Writers had to identify as being disabled
- Writers had to have a proven track record of creative writing, but this could be in any writing form; poetry, literature, theatre
- The play pitches had to be monologues or duologues
Produced by Birds of Paradise, in association with Perth Theatre.
And with EHFM as broadcast partner.
The three play pitches selected for commission were:
| The Premorial | by Jen McGregor |
| Jammed | by Gabriella Sloss |
| Bronagh & the Bum Goblin | by Áine King |
As development of the play scripts took place throughout 2021, we realised that one of the threads connecting each story was that they were each about characters with hidden disabilities – when the experience of being disabled is not apparent by looking at the person. This felt particularly relevant, because Something to Say was conceived as a development opportunity aiming to give visibility to disabled writers and characters, whose voices are seldom-heard within radio drama.
Because hidden disabilities don’t always have outwardly obvious physical signs they can include mental health, cognitive impairments, as well as mobility, speech, visual or hearing impairments. They can also include long term health conditions such as asthma, COPD, and chronic illnesses such as crohn’s, renal failure, diabetes, and sleep disorders when those conditions significantly impact day-to-day life.
Living with these conditions can make every day life more demanding for many people. They affect each person in different ways and can be painful, exhausting, and isolating. Without visible evidence of the hidden disability, it is often difficult for others to acknowledge the challenges faced, and as a consequence, sympathy and understanding can often be in short supply.
How can I listen to the plays?
Working with our broadcast partner, Edinburgh based community radio station EHFM, each of the plays was broadcast as an hour long package from Monday 15th – Friday 19th November 2021.
You can now listen to the hour long package of plays via the EHFM mixcloud page – click here
You can also listen to the individual plays via links found on this page below.
Credits and Context
Special thanks to BBC Scotland, for the use of their radio studio.
Original illustrations by Celine Mcilmunn – visit her Instagram page here.
This short clip gives credits and also provides some details about the different motivations each writer had for why they wrote their scripts.
The Premorial by Jen McGregor
Featuring:
- Chaya Gupta as Nat
- Abby McCann as Freya
A black comedy set in a world where there is technology that can predict the date you die, Freya is attending her parents “premorial” (party before your death day), when she gets some news that changes everything.
Content warning: this play deals with themes of death
Director’s Note:
Jen first had the idea for The Premorial many years ago. When she was 21, her mother had recently died, her dad was dying and she was having a cancer scare, so the question of lifespan was very much on her mind. She debated whether to have the tests the doctors recommended, and whether she would tell anyone the results if she did. She was also spending a lot of time thinking about funerals and who they’re actually for, and what a strange experience they are for an atypical brain that doesn’t find comfort or catharsis in that kind of social ritual. These thoughts percolated for a decade or so until eventually taking shape in this story of an alternate timeline where it’s commonplace to know your death dates, and of a young woman who may or may not have her whole life ahead of her.
Jen McGregor – Writer
Jen McGregor is a writer and spoken word artist, trained at Mountview and mentored by Rob Drummond through Playwrights’ Studio Scotland. Her play Heaven Burns won the Assembly Roxy Theatre Award in 2018. She is writer in residence with Fronteiras Theatre Lab, with whom she is developing three plays – Volante (sharings at Hothouse @ Traverse and EMSF, recipient of a Tom McGrath award), Canto X (sharing at Manipulate 2020), and Screech (initial development through Stellar Quines’ Make Do & Mend). She is currently working on Fragmental, her first full-length spoken word show about living with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder, with support from Playwrights Studio Scotland and Creative Scotland’s Create: Inclusion fund.
Chaya Gupta – Nat
Chaya is a British/Indian actor, musician and sound composer, with experience in stage and screen. She is a firm believer and strong advocate for the importance of art and representation, and is constantly striving to learn more about her craft, meet new people, and be involved in and create impactful work.
Abby McCann – Freya
Abby McCann is an actress, director and writer from Glasgow. In 2020 she graduated from Oxford University with a degree in English Language and Literature. In 2019, while at Oxford, McCann received the Juliet Bernard Memorial Prize awarded to Oxford’s Most Promising Actress for her performance in productions such as Claudia Roe, Enron (Oxford Playhouse, 2019); Abigail, The Crucible (2019); Asta, Little Eyolf (2018); and Miranda, NSFW (2018). While at Oxford, McCann also co-founded her own theatre company ‘MuckyOven’ with the intention of promoting young women in comedy. She directed and performed in the company’s debut production Allotment. Before Oxford, McCann attended PACE Youth Theatre (2007-2017), National Youth Theatre (2016) and trained with Scottish Contemporary Youth Ballet Company (2015-2017). Later this year, McCann will appear as the voice of the United Nations World Food Programme’s Animation for the crisis in Sahel. Currently, McCann is busy exploring her own relationship with dyspraxia by exploring how the neurodivergent mind literally manifests itself in the process of writing about it. Her most recent piece is published on the John Byrne online award page. This summer McCann will appear in Waterperry Opera Festival’s Peter and the Wolf and in Entwine Theatre’s debut piece If We Ended This at the Camden People’s Theatre at the Camden Fringe in August.
Jammed by Gabriella Sloss
Featuring:
- Alice Christina-Corrigan as Sasha
- Jack Hunter as Andrew
Stuck in a traffic jam, a couple get into an argument after Sasha confronts Andrew about why he won’t have sex with her any more, dredging up the experiences both of them have with mental health and how it effects them differently.
Please be aware this play contains explicit language
Director’s Note:
Gabriella wrote Jammed to explore an issue within relationships that is not necessarily discussed in public discourse but happens often. The play shines a light on depression and its varying relations to the sex drive, which as a stressor can lead a person to accelerate or brake on their sexual desire. What happens when two people in a relationship are both suffering from depression; one needs physical intimacy to feel better and connected, and the other can’t think of anything more stressful? This is an issue that is incredibly difficult to navigate, and Gabriella wanted to create a play (and therefore a space) where this could be looked at.
Gabriella Sloss – Writer
Gabriella is a Glasgow-based playwright, and founding member of the theatre company That’s What She Said Theatre. She was a part of the 2019 Playwright Studio Scotland Mentoring Programme, mentored by Morna Pearson. Her play Good Sex After Bad Sex was performed at Assembly Roxy (Edinburgh, 2019), and her play 787 Blinks was performedas part of the Pride Plays Festival (Traverse Theatre).
She has a commitment to writing work which is feminist and inherently sex-positive, and as such holds SCQF and CPD qualifications in Sexual Health Training and HIV Awareness.
Alice Christina-Corrigan – Sasha
Alice Christina-Corrigan is a North West based visually impaired actor. Recently graduated from ALRA North, Alice is passionate about working on new pieces of writing, connecting with fellow disabled actors and creating accessible theatre to change the landscape of the arts. Her recent credits include, Sheffield Theatres, NSDFestival and Everyman REP theatre.
Jack Hunter – Andrew
Jack graduated from the BA (Hons) Drama and Performance at Queen Margaret University in 2017.
TV credits include: Annika (Black Camel Pictures).
Theatre credits include: Cost of Living (Hampstead Theatre); All You Need is LSD (Told By An Idiot/ Birmingham Rep) and Let Me Play the Lion Too (Told By An Idiot/ Barbican Centre).
Radio work includes Bartholomew Abominations (Naked Productions/ Graeae Theatre/ BBC Radio 4).
Jack is currently enrolled on the Birds of Paradise and Playwright Studio Mentorship Award. In addition, Jack has appeared in the web series Crips Without Constraints (Graeae Theatre). Jack has also performed his own comedic and poetical works at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and on the BBC Social.
Bronagh & the Bum Goblin by Áine King
Featuring:
- Helen Fox as Bronagh
- Apphia Campbell as the Bum Goblin
Bronagh is trying to get to her son’s school assembly but her Inflammatory Bowel Disease means that she struggles with the long bus journey, especially as she is taunted the whole way by her psychological projection of the disease, her Bum Goblin.
Please be aware this play contains explicit language
Diector’s Note:
Crohn’s Disease and Colitis aren’t funny, of course. Bowel disease is horrible but most people struggling with it will tell at least one funny story about things that have happened while trying to hide it. Áine wanted to play around in that space between the awfulness of the illness and the ridiculous situations that it creates, especially when you’re trying to hide it. We are SO hung up about our bums. People literally die because they’re too embarrassed to take their bum to the doctor. Áine has written Bronagh to be a character everyone could sympathise with – can understand why she’s so embarrassed, but also one that everyone wants to shake for being so daft. Most of us have an inner-voice of self doubt. Bronagh invented the Goblin initially as a joke for her little boy, but it’s fed on a toxic mix of her shame and fear and guilt, and it’s taken over her life.
Áine King – Writer
Áine is a dramatist, director and designer. An irish East-Ender, she studied at St Martin’s School Of Art, the universities of Brighton and Sussex and at R.A.D.A. Theatre work includes Gunn Woman as part of Women’s Writes at The Arcola Theatre, March 2020, Mother’s Pride at the Chapel Playhouse, Battlesong at the Rialto, Brighton, Flotsam at Theatre Deli and Rum Shack, Glasgow, Grambo as part of Faces of the Day, Southwark Playhouse, Dracula at the Latest Bar, Brighton and Hard Chair Stories at the Rose Theatre, Bankside. Radio work includes Sister Act and Serenade for Supersoundscotland’s Writer’s Block and Gunn Woman for Radio Reverb, Brighton. Her immersive, mad-house ensemble adaptation of Dracula for Otherplace Productions in 2011 won her a Fringe Report award for Best Auteur. Many of her works for theatre are based on real-life stories of working class women. Áine now lives in the Orkney Islands.
Helen Fox – Bronagh
Helen is a disabled actor, writer and theatre producer, she trained in acting and psychology. She started her own theatre company in 2015 and has since produced 6 of her own plays, amongst other works, and is working on several new projects for the year ahead. She is looking forward to her first foray into radio.
Photo by Kim Ayres
Apphia Campbell – Bum Goblin
Apphia Campbell is originally from Florida and after graduating from college she moved to New York where she performed Off-Broadway.
In 2013 she wrote her critically acclaimed piece, ‘Black Is The Color Of My Voice’ and opened in Shanghai to rave reviews before performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2014 where it sold out and has been touring the UK; selling out in prestigious houses such as St. James Theatre, Wilton’s Music Hall, and Oxford Playhouse.
In 2017, her new show with Meredith Yarbrough, ‘Woke’, was presented as part of the Made In Scotland Showcase, won a Scotsman Fringe First, a Highly Commended award from Amnesty International, and was shortlisted for The
Filipa Bragança Award and Scottish Art Club Theatre Award.
In 2018, she continued to tour Woke and was featured in the guardians 50 shows to see at the fringe and Vogue’s 5 shows not to miss in 2018 fringe. In 2018, she also became a member of the BBC writersroom (a group chosen for one year tutelage with the BBC).
In 2019, she made her west end debut with Black Is The Color Of My Voice which had rave reviews and a sold-out run. She also had a London premiere of Woke at the prestigious Battersea Arts Centre. During 2019, she performed both of her shows totaling over 100 performances for the year. In 2019, she received received her first commission from the BBC for a children’s story, called Zachary The Zebroid which aired in February 2020.
Recent Credits: The Last Bordello (Virtue/ David Leddy, Director) Woke (Ambrosia/Assata Shakur, Caitlin Skinner, Director), Black Is The Color Of My Voice (Mena Bordeux, Arran Hawkins, Director), The Color Purple (Celie, James Harkness Director), Soul Sessions (Cabaret), No Exit (Inez, Michael Beets, Director)
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