Being 60
My mum died at 60, I’m the youngest of five, and I think it’s fair to say that we have all watched as that number approached, wondering if we will make it. My dad is nearly 90, so there is another road we can tread too. When she turned sixty, we had organised a surprise meal (up until then my family met in pubs only). We booked a posh room in a hotel in town, a long table, speeches, flowers and presentations. But it didn’t stop there, we took her back to their local pub where her friends had gathered, then home to find that her grandchildren had decorated the living room and we all danced till dawn. She kept all her cards in a box, wrapped and special. To have such a fuss was huge for Edna, it was just about her, no one else and we poured out our love for her. We didn’t know then that seven months later she would die, three months from diagnosis to death. Now I’m her age, surviving breast cancer, loving blue skies (even when they are grey), working hard to live my best life and today I’m reflecting on the process to create Mycelial.
2016
I’ve been looking at my many notes books that document and capture the creation of Mycelial. The idea for the project (called Two Camps) started back in 2016. I’d been asked to run a workshop for the North East Sex Work Forum. During this time, I became aware of a debate between two camps of thought, the Nordic Model or the Decriminalisation of Sex Work, with both aiming to end violence against women/people. The debate was/is challenging, toxic even. I asked if Open Clasp could help, to create theatre that makes space for debate and discussion. The forum said yes so we planned, and fund raised to make it happen.
2019-2020
In 2019 to early 2020 I started to interview young women from the West End Women & Girls Centre. I was then hosted by Changing Lives and visited outreach projects in Wolverhampton and Doncaster. I went out at night with workers who supported women involved in street-based sex work. I remember being in Doncaster 31st January 2020 at 11pm, the fireworks and celebrations of those who voted to leave the EU, Brexit was done. I remember coming home, feeling really ill, like a flu type of illness, going to bed to sleep it off.
Back at the office planes were booked as we were flying to Aotearoa/New Zealand to run workshops with the New Zealand Sex Workers Collective and then of course the pandemic hit and we moved our workshops online. My notebook has a tab saying VIRUS. That’s when I started counting people, adding up the countries income and expenditure, logging ships with tons of fish and no customers and pigs too fat to sell. We slowed, gave out soup to the local community and moved online.
In August 2020, we ran our first set of workshops with the New Zealand Sex Workers Collective. I would get up at 4.30am, prep and go online with the team at 5.30am. At 6am the group in New Zealand joined us, 5pm their time.
We’d adapted the methodology (the method we use when working with groups) to work on zoom. We still asked the groups to work collectively and to pull on their own experiences to create a composite character that held all of their experiences. We used the Role on the Wall and breakout rooms to create Still Images/Thought Tracking/Captions, using pen and paper, drawing and speech bubbles. We also included creative writing exercises in the sessions. We asked each group to create scenes and/or creative writing using their senses, what they and/or the character could see, smells, touch, feel etc. The sun rose here and set in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Our aim with every group was to create a safe space for women/people to share their lived experiences, to discuss the personal and the political. Would it work online? Yes, we had problems with wi-fi, but not the connections made.
Our next group were women from Wolverhampton and the North East via Changing Lives. We had learnt how intimate creative writing was, for us all. It was the second lockdown, the workshops offered safety and trust, the work created was insightful and beautiful, with all our senses engaged and our hearts full, we changed.
As I look through my notebooks I see the final session with this group was on the 17th December 2020, International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers and I was wearing red. Three days before this I had been diagnosed with breast cancer. It was invasive, and I had no idea what the outcome was going to be, I thought and feared I was going to die. Dramatic I know but when I look at the notebooks I can’t help but see the marks in the sand, the before and after, both the pandemic and being diagnosed.
2021
I took time out to recover and then in the July 2021 we started with our third group who were based in the North of Ireland. As covid restrictions were still in place, we again worked online. The creative writing had become the heart of the workshops. It was with this group were I first heard the word Mycelial. I didn’t know what it meant. With the next group they used the word Neurodiversity, I knew the lived experience, but the word felt unfamiliar. I was on a steep learning curve but I’ll come back to that one.
Mycelial was used to describe how sex worker activists talk and support each other, sharing information, identifying threats and building strengths … ancient communication systems like the Mycelium. Basically, the Mycelial fungi, a network underground (like the internet) and its mushrooms talking and feeding trees, trees and air, us and the planet. It’s unseen but a communication network that is clever, caring and strong.
Next was what we call The Cork group (based somewhere and everywhere in the Republic of Ireland), it was now August 2021. Neurodiversity, I don’t know why the word felt new, I have always worked with people who are neurodiverse and I myself can relate to being on that spectrum and like Mycelial, it’s taken me a while to be able to say it, the letters need ordering in my head before I can say them out loud, now I can.
With the Cork group we talked about Dublin Pride and the washed-out rainbow flags, the bridge and riot police. We talked of seasons, what was in our drawers, money, routines, if walls had ears, love and lust, loss, red bricks, laws and the Catholic Church. We went forward and backward in time.
Running parallel I interviewed two young women online in Manchester them saying I wear a crown but I crumble inside. I’ve been victimised, I’m not a victim.
Zoom meant we met everyone where they were, farmhouses, hotels, bedrooms, cars, living rooms, kitchens and cozy apartments filled with books and DVDS.
When all the workshops were completed we brought all the groups together, 16th December 2021 and shared what had been created. The Mycelial was strong at this gathering.
Writing Mycelial
My next task is to then write a script in response. It was clear to me that we needed to include the co-creators creative writing, many are wordsmiths. Mycelial is a fusion of their words and mine. My first draft of Mycelial was 16,000+ words.
Draft Scripts edited and shared with all the groups for their endorsement and/or critical feedback. I have amended to protect those who needed to be anonymous and in the most part I have got it right. But with one group the story told caused offence and I worked to put it right. There is a huge responsibility writing in response, this isn’t for the faint hearted, it’s their stories and we are trusted to create, but it only works if we do it together and the groups feel in control, informed and involved, done with and not done to. Open Clasp are the scaffolding our co-creators are centre stage.
We have a big creative team working on it now, led by our award-winning Associate Director Laura Lindow. We go into production late September and then it will be showcased at Northern Stage* October 20th to the 28th. It will be filmed in front of a live audience and our co-creators will be attending, joining us with post show panels, and we are delighted that Dame Catherine Healy and Annah Pickering (New Zealand Sex Worker Collective) will be joining us too.
We started this journey to help with the debate. Mycelial is storytelling, it spans the pandemic to the start of the Ukrainian War. Its form could be likened to a series of short stories but its theatre. Our characters reflect those we worked with, inclusive of trans women of colour, those who are lesbian, intersex, queer, straight and not so straight. It’s a vibrant rainbow, a song that needs singing, its activism and theatre at its best, that is our aim.
Back to my mum, Edna. It’s been 30yrs now and I tell myself not to cry, as I’m ‘old’ now myself and your parents die. But like the Mycelial I feel her connection every day. That woman marched with me against Section 28, she drank with all the lesbians in bars in Manchester were I then lived. Our rocks are many, and she was mine.
Catrina
*Mycelial is in association with Northern Stage
