My Story

A couple of years ago, I signed up for the 2020 London Marathon, to run in support of the work we do at Upstart Theatre. I love running, and I love Upstart, so it seemed like a good idea. At that point I had a handful of marathons under my belt and my confidence was super-high. So our producer Hannah and I decided that we'd enter Upstart into the ballot for charities...and we got a place. Then...well, we all know what happened. We had two years of pandemic. Among the greater tragedies, it pretty much destroyed the theatre industry as we know it. Theatre buildings that had run for decades shut down. Hundreds of companies, especially smaller ones like ours, went bankrupt. Performance workers from actors to designers to technicians to stage managers left the theatre to work in other industries.

But we're still here. Partly through luck, partly through sheer bloody-mindedness and refusal to give up to mere reality, Upstart Theatre continues to exist. During the pandemic, we opened up and opened out what we do, taking our work outside of theatres and meeting people in all sorts of other ways and places. We launched a balloon into space with our Andover Space Programme project. We made a podcast about protest and resistance with our Birmingham Beneath the City citizen performers' group. We made a game about reforestation which was played at COP26. We ran workshops online for artists in the UK, Mexico, Macedonia and many other places around the world. And now, we're getting ready to bring back DARE Festival - our small but mighty festival of independent theatre, which we're planning to bring back to Shoreditch Town Hall in April this year.

It's a lot, but I'm incredibly excited about what Upstart will be doing in the year ahead. But we're going to need help to do it. We're proud to be a non-profit organisation, and we've been a registered charity since 2011. Our artist development programmes - especially DARE Festival - are geared towards supporting artists from underrepresented background to get commissioned. At DARE, we reserve four of our six commissions for artists from global majority backgrounds; who are LGBTQI+; who come from working-class backgrounds; and artists with disabilities. To make these happen, we need to raise another £15,000 on top of our Arts Council grant for the festival.

So - I'm asking for help. And because it turns out running a theatre company is more a marathon than a sprint (thanks for that, my old university tutors) this seems like a really nice way to do it. I've had some health challenges this year so running a marathon feels like a huge deal for me. I got knocked back massively by a monster chest infection earlier this year, but thanks to the magnificent NHS I'm back on my feet again and using the hills of Bristol as the miraculous training they are.

I'd really love it if you could consider sponsoring me, so that the Upstart team can continue to support extraordinary emerging artists to make playful, powerful shows that help us understand the world we live in! The marathon's on the 2nd October, so I'll be training for the next couple of months to get back in shape. I'll keep you posted with how I do...