Naomi Westerman’s mum died unexpectedly in 2018. In her new show, BATMAN (aka Naomi’s Death Show), the playwright grapples with bereavement. And Batman. 

Utilising the story of Bruce Wayne and death as a prompt for transformation, this new show is an interactive quest and satire of the true crime genre. Staged by Nottingham-based theatre company Chronic Insanity, the play will also be available as a digital production.

Ahead of the show's premier at the Vaults festival, Westerman tells Run Riot about the unmooring experience of returning to a raw state of grief, and the strength that can be found in withholding particular parts of a story, in a world that greedily wants to know it all. 

Kate Wyver: Personal grief and true crime aren’t topics you would automatically put together. What made you want to write this show?

Naomi Westerman: I'm a little bemused by the idea that murder and grief aren't natural bedfellows. Anyone who is murdered - regardless of how much the true crime genre tries to reduce their deaths to entertainment - will leave behind grieving loved ones. I guess that's why I wrote the play, to show that murder victims are real people whose deaths cause real grief, not just morbid cartoon characters who exist for entertainment purposes.

Kate: What has most surprised you about grief?

Naomi: Other people's reaction to it. People sometimes get very angry at being made to feel uncomfortable. Other people feel driven to show empathy by sharing their experiences of grief, which is sweet, but also slightly cringe when you can see someone struggling to find a story to share and all they can come up with is "one time my hamster died" or something. I get a LOT of people telling me their dead pet stories.

Kate: How has it felt to turn your personal experience into a theatrical performance?

Naomi: Odd, just because it takes such a long time for plays to reach the stage and you move on, but doing a play forces you back to where you were when you wrote it. Shortly after my mum died, a fairly major theatre commissioned me to write a play on any subject I wanted, and I was in such a bad headspace I just couldn't write about anything else. I wrote something extremely personal and cathartic, and it's very strange and vulnerable to have to go back to it five years later. 

I'm an adult, I'm a big believer in personal responsibility, I'm not avoiding taking responsibility for my choices, but I wish someone had said "think carefully about signing contracts that will commit the next five years of your life to remaining in this emotional headspace when you're in the immediate shock stage of grief." Because it is incredibly hard to have to go back to that very raw place of grief the other play came from. 

Part of why I wrote Batman - and I wrote it originally in 2020, two years after my mum died - was because I had more distance and felt I was in a place psychologically where I could have more control over what I wrote. I wanted to write something that was more objective and used humour to examine how much people want to exploit others' personal trauma, and not only be more selective about what I share and what I withhold, but also examine and interrogate the fact that I'm choosing to withhold parts of the story.

Kate: Why did you want it to be such an interactive performance? 

Naomi: I didn't want to do the cliché of the one-person autobiographical show where someone stands on a stage for an hour and recounts their personal trauma. I wanted something that would be fun and lighthearted too, and I thought the interactive elements (which are mainly spoof gameshows) would be an interesting way to link the autobiographical part of the play with the idea of satirising how the true crime genre reduces horrific trauma to entertainment.

The interactive parts are very gentle and entirely voluntary. At various points the audience is asked to vote by holding up cards. Everything else is completely voluntary - the audience is invited to come on stage to light a candle if they want to remember someone they have lost, and at various points the audience has the opportunity to put their hands up if they would like to speak. No one is going to be put on the spot or be asked to do anything.

Kate: Can you tell me about the alternate version of the show that is being made for digital audiences? 

Naomi = There's a single main narrative to the play which will be filmed, so people can choose just to sit down and watch it as a traditional filmed stage play. Then there are additional digital bits and bobs (like some death-themed games to play, or an online memorial page to visit), and little bits of extra story pop up here and there, depending on how much you want to search around and what you choose to look at.

Kate: Are you allowed to share any information about the TV series you’re writing about a group of disabled people who form a criminal heist gang?

Naomi: It's still in the very early stages, but I've been working with Sara Johnson (formerly of Endor Productions, now founder of Bridge06, who is a wonderful executive producer, a huge disability advocate, and all-round amazing human being) to develop the show. I've been describing it as "Oceans 11 with wheelchairs" but the style and sense of humour is much more similar to classic British working-class comedies like the Full Monty or Calendar Girls.

Kate: What would your dream superpower be?

Naomi: Teleportation.

Kate: Is there anything else I should know?

Naomi: After Batman, my next play PUPPY (a lesbian romantic comedy about two women who fall in love while dogging, start a feminist porn empire, and wind up taking on parliament as accidental political activists) will stage in October-November 2023. Details TBA!

BATMAN (aka Naomi’s Death Show) is at VAULT Festival, 4 - 5 March 2023. To buy tickets, please head here.