Delving into amateur stand-up culture and trying to make peace with a messy brain, Pervasive Media Studio Resident Victoria Melody's joyful and mischievous documentary-theatre show Head Set hits Watershed having taken Edinburgh Fringe by storm.
Victoria Melody says:
“I’m delighted to be taking Head Set out on tour, sharing its important themes with audiences across the country and connecting with neurodivergent audiences."
Fed up with theatre-making after a hard stint of touring, Melody fell back onto her Plan B: she decided to try and crack stand-up comedy. But what sounded like genius jokes in her head came out of her mouth as garbled mess, so she sought the help of a speech and language therapist which led to her eventual diagnosis as neurodivergent. Always the experimenter, she took her later-in-life diagnosis of ADHD and autism to neuroscientists and started working with them to examine the scientific potential of stand-up as self-medication for ADHD, using wearable tech to scan her brain while she delivered jokes.
Head Set follows Melody's strange journey into finding one’s authentic self while trying to succeed in the mainstream.
"One of the best shows to see at Edinburgh Fringe." Time Out, The Times, The Stage
Her stand-up tour follows a hugely successful run at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2022 and has been updated and restaged with the help of Bryony Kimmings to reflect on Victoria’s recent life changes.
“Women are often underdiagnosed with ADHD and autism because we are so good at masking our differences to try and fit in...I was taught by a comedy teacher that there are rules and formulas to writing jokes and whilst I was conforming to this structure, I was dying on stage. Head Set shows us that there is the way we present ourselves but then there is also what makes us spontaneously and uniquely funny. It’s about capitalising on our particular strangeness...” says Melody.
Victoria was part of Watershed’s 2019 Winter Artists in Residence, supporting artists to experiment, make and think. We work with creative practitioners from varied disciplines, career stages and backgrounds, who have ideas for projects that blend art and technology.
About Victoria
A social chameleon by trade, Melody is a documentary-theatre maker who embeds herself in niche communities and topics for several years: in Northern Soul, she became a pigeon fancier and a northern soul fan, Major Tom (Argus Angel Award, Total Theatre Award and Arches Brick award) was about becoming a beauty queen and a championship dog handler (by getting to Crufts). She followed up with Hair Peace to find out where her human hair extensions came from, and Ugly Chief was performed with her dad about his terminal diagnosis and giving him a living funeral. They later found out he had been misdiagnosed!
The research and development for this project has been supported by Watershed’s Winter Residency, Farnham Maltings, South Street, University of Sussex and Arts Council England.
Related
Comments
Comments are disabled for this post.
