“Skin and Blister Theatre return to the Brighton Fringe after their debut show, Hold Me Close, four long years ago… Although they had a banging title, every single draft brought different problems and new headaches.
Ella McCallum stars as Aoife, but also as herself, and also as an actor playing themselves, and also as Aoife playing herself, and… . can you see why it’s taken so long?! A one-person show* and an exhuming of our ideas graveyard, Don’t Let Me Die Before Sunday has reached its final form. Finally. Our mental health dramatised for your pleasure.”
Where: Rotunda Theatre
When: 3-5 May
Ticket link: https://www.brightonfringe.org/events/dont-let-me-die-before-sunday/
Ella, director DArcy and writer Elspeth McColl unpack this bag of dramatic tricks for us.
Can you tell us a bit about your new show?
Don’t Let Me Die Before Sunday follows Aoife in A&E… again. Between the imagined world she uses to distract herself and the reality of her hospital experience, the show jumps between different drafts in pursuit of telling the story ‘right’.
Written by Elspeth McColl, directed by DArcy Brown, and starring Ella McCallum who plays Aoife, but also herself, and also as an actor playing themselves, and also as Aoife playing herself?!
Inspired by Elspeth’s own personal experience, the show grapples constantly with the challenge of creating a show about anxiety and mental health. How do we present that without being triggering? Or bleak? How do we make it ‘fun’ without being insensitive?
It’s a big anniversary for Brighton Fringe this year – what do you like most about it?
We love Brighton Fringe’s emphasis on cultivating and embracing the weird and wonderful. To try things out, not be afraid to be different. It has the essence of community that it seems larger fringes are, unfortunately, starting to lose.
A lot of our rehearsals and development for this show happened in Brighton and Sussex as two-thirds of our company is local. Our first show debuted at Brighton Fringe in 2021, and without that opportunity (and trial by fire!), we doubt we’d be here with a new show – it’s a lovely full circle moment.
It’s been four years since the last show – so how did this one come about?
After the high of Hold Me Close, we had an idea for a new show pretty quickly, but it took 3 years for that spark to turn into Don’t Let Me Die Before Sunday.
The short reason is that making a show is HARD!
We knew what we wanted to explore (and also had the title straightaway!), but couldn’t figure out its final form. Initially, the show lived as a short film, then became a interactional performance on a train, then a one woman show and then a million more iterations before we realised we had exhausted what felt like every avenue.
So we set ourselves a new challenge: make a show including all the elements we’ve tried! Since we did that, the show has emerged, full of explorations of mental health (and the challenge of creating a show!) and we couldn’t be prouder of it.
We felt the pressure of having to put out a show that was ‘perfect’, even though this felt at odds with our ethos. We are thrilled to have dedicated the time, energy, sweat (and sometimes tears) to the overall process. It ended up being a pursuit of the ‘right’ show, over the idea of the ‘best’ show.
What else is in the pipeline after these shows?
We are heading back to London for one night only at The Churchill Theatre Bromley Studio on Sunday 13th July – tickets are on sale now.
Beyond that, we are hoping to take Don’t Let Me Die Before Sunday to as many people as possible as we feel the story, process and experience should be shared. You’ll have to follow us on @_skinandblister to find out what’s coming next!
Sell us your show in three words!
Jazzy, sweary and chaotic!