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The Camden Fringe Interviews
Georgie Steele on And I’ll Blow Your House Down
Brighton Fringe is another wonderful time to showcase some of the best that fringe theatre has to offer. Over the years numerous shows have cut their teeth there, before going on to great things. We therefore have high expectation for Georgie Steele’s And I’ll Blow Your House Down, an award-winning show from Brighton Fringe 2023 as heads to Camden People’s Theatre from 21 to 25 August for Camden Fringe.
Described as “a disenchanted storytelling and physical theatre show about family disability in an ableist society” Georgie’s story is based on her own experiences with the health and care system. Wanting to know more, we popped along to The Three Little Piggy’s home to catch up with Georgie, promising we wouldn’t huff and puff too much whilst we were there.
Welcome to ET Georgie, so what can you tell us about your show?
I’m Georgie Steele, writer and performer of And I’ll Blow Your House Down.
Audiences of the show can expect a rollercoaster ride through the world of health and social care, with Kafkaesque risk assessments, outrageous forty-page form filling antics and the amazing gameshow ‘The Tombola of Health and Social Care‘. The show is the true-life tale of me and my family’s lived experience of unpaid care and family disability – with extra jokes! It’s exuberant and playful as well as poignant and raging, and ends by inviting the audience to take direct action to build a more equal and joyful society.
Where are you playing then?
We’re playing at Camden People’s Theatre, which is the perfect venue for this show as CPT is a tireless and renowned backer of new theatre that seeks to make change in society. I’m personally really thrilled to return to CPT, as I used to perform in alternative cabaret nights there over twenty years ago: returning freighted with everything I’ve learned and experienced in the intervening years means a lot to me.
What was the inspiration behind the show?
As a writer/deviser, the show was inspired by my experiences as an unpaid carer over the last twenty years for my two sons, who both have Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. When our sons were first diagnosed, the most difficult thing for us as a family was the shock of this huge change in our expectations of the future, including the ongoing need there would be for therapies, equipment and adaptations. But it soon dawned on us that often it wasn’t the medical condition that caused the most problems, it was the way the institutions of society are structured around disabled people and their unpaid carers, especially the Social Care system: often the very services that are meant to support us bring us down. It’s far more ridiculous than any far-fetched fairy tale!
An ongoing theme in the show’s development has been the consent of my sons that I can tell our story in public, which always has to be thought about in true-life storytelling and especially when an unpaid carer is telling the story of their experiences, which necessarily is also the story of the people they care for. And even more so when disabled people are involved as they have often had the experience of non-disabled people telling their story for them, without their say, hence the slogan ‘nothing about us without us’. My sons have given full consent to everything I say in the show, although they don’t want to actually take part themselves, and I have incorporated scenes about how they gave that consent into the show.
How long have you been working on this?
I’ve been working on this show for eight years now, with support from Offbeat Oxford, the School of Storytelling in Sussex and Brighton Fringe. My initial need to tell this story as a way of processing and coming to terms with my own experiences has gradually transformed into a fierce desire to communicate to audiences how difficult society makes life for disabled people and their unpaid carers, but in an entertaining and empowering way that invites audiences to take part in trying to make change. This has led me to change the show radically over the last six months, bringing a new, more political, more ridiculous spirit to it, using clowning to develop that sprit, with clown direction from the fantastic Jon Davison.
What has it been like preparing for your role?
As a performer, I have relished the challenges of combining my skills in oral storytelling, my training in corporeal mime, and my newest learning about clown to communicate this story in a way that is engaging, fun and accessible while still truthful to my family’s lived experience. I want to hold the audience through the journey of the show with care and with love, but also with fun and a lively spirit of playfulness!
What is it you hope the audience think after watching the show?
After the show, I hope carers and disabled people in the audience feel I’ve expressed something relevant and meaningful about aspects of their lives; I hope non-disabled people and people who aren’t carers have understood something of the difficulties that society creates for those groups of people; I hope everyone has had a laugh, wants to change the world feels they can contribute to that change! These aren’t niche issues, either, as it’s very likely that we will all be disabled or carers or both at some point in our lives.
Are there any plans for what comes next after August – for you or the show?
After Camden Fringe, I’m interested in getting funding to tour the show in a new more accessible performance (at the moment it’s only wheelchair accessible), with sign language interpretation, more audience interaction, relaxed performances, maybe even a deconstructed storyline.
Being Camden Fringe, we all know sets have to be bare minimum, how have you got around this?
Luckily for me, oral storytelling often uses very few props and lots of imagination, and mime is very useful as you can just pretend props are there, saving time and effort moving them about! Plus tiny budgets then don’t need to be stretched by making expensive props like the (imaginary) tombola I have in the show…
If budget was not an issue, what could your show look like then?
Well, if budget, space and time were not issues, the pieces of scenery I’d love to have in the show would be an old-style wooden tombola for the ‘Tombola of Health and Social Care’ gameshow, a massive disco ball for the same scene and a lifesize cut-out figure of Neil Kinnock (you’ll have to come and ask me after the show for a proper explanation of that).
Will you be frequenting the bar after your show, and if so, are you hoping people might stay to ask you about the show?.
On that subject, I will definitely be frequenting the bar/foyer after my show, if they are still open, and I’d love it if people wanted to share their own experiences with me, ask me more about the show, and give feedback.
See you there!
Many thanks to Georgie for sharing this personal story. You can catch And I’ll Blow Your House Down when it plays at Camden People’s Theatre between 21st and 25th August. Further information and tickets available here.
