Lisa Gornick brings her show Drawing on the Bottle to Camden Roar this month – a festival celebrating the 30th anniversary of Camden People’s Theatre.
Set in the ever-lively Camden – one of London’s main hubs for music, culture, and subculture – it follows the true story of Lisa’s life as her relationship with alcohol starts out as a sociable party girl before ending up as a lonely solo drinker.
Through a brave, multi-dimensional, and comic re-telling of her unhealthy history with alcohol, Lisa hopes to encourage audiences to question their own relationship with drinking, and to highlight the ways in which the descent into abuse can lead to separation and alienation from others, through exploring her first-hand experience.
Where: Camden People’s Theatre (nearest tube Warren Street)
When: 7-8 Jun
Ticket link: https://cptheatre.co.uk/festivals/camden-roar
Camden Roar has a great line-up this year! What does it mean to you to be included?
It’s so great to start my new live drawing show at The Camden People’s Theatre – I’ve always loved the space. I have performed there before with another live drawing show about regrets, in conjunction with University College London.
It’s a warm and vibrant theatre that pushes new ideas and connections. I like it for its accessibility and it thinks about its audience. Indeed this festival is curated by the Camden audience of the programme.
I’m so pleased they chose my show to start its life here. Indeed I was born round the corner in University College Hospital.
Your show is a very personal one. Why did you decide to bring it to the stage, and how did you go about developing it?
A lot of my work is personal. This one really goes into a deep place: my horrendous relationship with alcohol.
I really enjoy the live drawing show medium. It brings together all my creative spurs – drawing, performing, and filmmaking.
It feels like I am in the present tense, making a DIY film in front of the audience’s eyes. So the form really excites me, and I like the audiences’ fascination and absorption with it.
I think it’s vital to talk about alcohol more. I went to a really disastrous place with it. I want to share that for a connection, and also it’s a deep thing to think about.
That’s what art/theatre/film can do – get to our souls via ink, pen, drawing, the screen, the voice, and music.
The show is an evolving thing. I have a format I follow, and then I see how to roam with it on the night. No two shows are the same.
The audience being there affects it. I have developed this show with free writing, free drawing, playing with ideas alone, and in front of a director/choreographer collaborator who feeds back her insights.
Then I go away and write/draw some more. I record myself and build an emotional journey that allows me to draw, voice, and perform the piece.
Do you think people in general have changed their views about women living with addiction?
It’s changing all the time as we learn more about addiction. But women are being recorded as drinking more than they used to or were investigated as.
So the research says more women drink now – research says more women of my age drink and drink alone.
I got very affected by reading writing by people like Gabor Mate, who said the majority of the women he works with who are addicted to alcohol/drugs suffered some form of sexual abuse.
That is true for me and makes me feel so sad for the women who get stuck in a spiral of drink disaster.
The use of art in rehabilitation is a core theme of your show. What has it meant to you being able to share this with others?
I am increasingly interested in how art can heal us. When I was drinking heavily, I stopped drawing. I stopped even watching creative things. Now, I need to draw to feel calm, centred, to think, and explore things.
I do feel that drawing is something everyone can do at any time. Indeed, I do run drawing workshops, too, to get people holding pens and connecting with paper and just unfurling their souls.
I intend to take this show to more audiences after it’s Camden Roar Launch and to build a cross-platform production, which will include this show and alongside it a micro budget feature film.
I also plan a book of drawings and words on The Bottle and finally an exhibition/sale of drawings from the show and inspired by this whole production.
I’d love to have people come to the subject of alcohol from various angles and for them to meet and explore, learn, reflect.
What would you like the audience to take away from Drawing on the Bottle?
I’d love them to enjoy the show. To get immersed in the way the ideas and stories around alcohol unfurl.
I hope they reflect on what alcohol is and what caring for each other is and fot ourselves is. What is alcohol? To inspect it and think about the person behind the drinker.