Q&A: Bryony Kimmings on Cancer, Laughter and Post-Brexit Escapism
Bryony Kimmings is a 'performance artist, comedian, writer, theatre maker, feminist, playwright, director, activist and loudmouth' (in no particular order). Her latest show, A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer, is a musical collaboration with Complicite coming soon to the National Theatre. Last year's Fake It Til You Make It was co-devised with her partner, Tim, in response to his experiences with depression. She is also involved in a long term project helping to work against the political marginalisation of young people: The Boys Project engages and collaborates with men ages 18-25 from council estates across Britain. I chatted to her about illness, inspiration and tranquility.
Eli Goldstone: Hi Bryony – your latest show, A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer, starts touring soon. What initially inspired you to make a musical about cancer?
Bryony Kimmings: Complicite called me in for a meeting to chat about what I wanted to make next. They were scoping me out for a new arm of their company where they support ambitious new artists who are looking to create bigger projects. Myself and Judith, the amazing producer there, chatted around various ideas and none of them seemed to land. Then I sneezed and Judith backed away from me saying she had really low immunity and she couldn’t get ill. She proceeded to tell me she was having treatment for an aggressive breast cancer. I was looking to move my practice from being focused on only my own personal autobiography to the true stories of others. I asked her if she would like to collaborate on a show about cancer. I told her I had always wanted to combine my music and theatre talents and that I hated most musicals, so we should make an awesome one.
I then approached my wonderful collaborator and friend Tom Parkinson to once again work together and invited my lovely friend Brian Lobel to write with us, he is a super great artist with a deep and long history of making work about cancer. It's been 2 years of digging deep, following around patients and workshopping… but the script is finally ready and it goes into production in August. There are 18 people in it!
Eli: Often patients with cancer are said to be ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ a battle with the disease, what do you think is the effect of talking about illness in this way?
Bryony: The effect of branding people losers if they don’t manage to survive cancer is deep and complex but in my work I try to always scrape back all the complexities and present the true, honest simple facts. So if you have absolutely no control on the functions of the internal workings of your body… if a cell just one day decides that it wants to go rogue… then why should you shoulder guilt and blame for not being able to survive it? It's just science. Nothing much you do can help. That terminology is our way of controlling something so terrifyingly out of our control. So it’s a false economy to make patients have to live up to impossible expectations, it helps no one.
The other thing with this rhetoric is that it conscripts people’s natural emotional reactions… to have to be a fighting hero makes it harder to fall apart, to be depressed, to want to rage and scream, to want to wallow; essentially do cancer your own way. The ways in which we deal with illness as a society are very much designed to make those who AREN’T ill feel better - well that seems like bullshit to me, so we are calling it out. If we could all talk about vulnerability more, needing one another in times of great stress more, and death more, then we would be better to one another and everyone would benefit. It’s a musical about cancer but also, rather grandly, about the state of humanity.
Eli: Have you found humour useful in order to open up conversation on difficult or taboo subjects (cancer, mental health in Fake It, STIs in Sex Idiot, alcohol abuse in 7 Day Drunk)?
Bryony: Of course. That is my trademark. To talk about the deepest, scariest, darkest things we must find the language, tools and heart to make it OK. Even in the darkest moments in my life I have had to laugh, else you break into millions of pieces. Making depressing sad work is easy. You just press certain buttons. To make people feel they are understood, to connect them to the people in the room, to hold their hand through something hard and keep looking them in the eye and saying, it's OK, it's OK, it's OK. That is hard and what I always strive to do. So we laugh and we cry. We have to.
Eli: You juggle autobiographical work with a broader vision of social change: has your creative focus shifted in recent years and if so, how?
Bryony: In recent years I have been more interested in how what we say and do can change the world. After visiting Cuba in 2014 and doing the project with my niece (where we created a feminist alternative popstar and tried to get her world famous) I became more globally focused and less obsessed with myself. Ha! So my works are now always change focused.
Additionally I have become a mother in recent years and my writing and performing circumstances have changed, so I am writing more and performing less. I am not in anything for a long time in my planning and I feel so much less anxious in my life its unreal. I am one of those annoying extroverted introverts… I realise now I spent a lot of my time wishing I wasn’t onstage. I am, in fact, writing about that for my next show at Soho Theatre. That and motherhood.
Eli: The Boys’ Project is currently in the ‘tooling up’ stage, could you tell us a bit about what’s involved with that?
Bryony: Tooling up has literally been a chance for my 50-recruits to learn more about politics, economics, the media and justice. In order to change the world you have to become an expert in its machinations, so you can subvert them. So we have been on a voyage of discovery with some great teachers… Mike Sani from Bite the Ballot, Inua Ellams, Chris Thorpe, Akala. They are such beautiful profound and creative lads. I wish I could have been there more, but being a mum prevents it!
Eli: You mentor, write, produce and star in multiple shows as well as being your own limited company – if I gave you 24 hours in which you could do absolutely anything except work, what would you do and where would you go?
Bryony: Holy Christ, there are definitely two polar opposites at work in me at the moment. Back in the day I would charter a private jet, fill it with loads of my mates and fuck off to Croatia and get wasted on a beach and not sleep. BUT nowadays I would love to be with my son Frank in a tranquil place eating nice food and singing with my dearest friends with no other bugger around. A field, in the shade. The latter doesn’t sound so expensive… and if I can do anything, then I demand that someone bring me an entire new wardrobe and shit loads of chocolate. I think running away from this post-brexit maniacal world is on my mind a lot at the moment!
Eli: Your work engages with people who might feel vulnerable or otherwise excluded, do you think that creatives and makers have more of a social responsibility than ever in the current political climate?
Bryony: Hmmmm. I know I feel that about myself. I wouldn’t want to say the same for others because there is always a place for pure unadulterated beauty or art for art's sake. No matter how awful the world gets there will always be music. BUT I do think in times of great change the artists always try and make sense of the cruelty of the world. And so they should. The problems come when it's only the artists who bother! We are in an era of great apathy. It's everyone’s job to muck in. And I will do my bit to help. For me it is a humans duty to make other humans OK. I do however find the fixation on only western problems problematic. We live in a global society in so many ways and I feel advocacy and activism needs to catch up.
Eli: Finally, what’s your advice for staying inspired and prolific?
Bryony: Be truthful. Think deep. Try to give and not take away. Always remember you create for others not just for yourself. Only make work about something you actually care about. And read. Loads.