The Gramophones

The Gramophones (from L-R Ria Ashcroft, Hannah Stone and Kristy Guest)
 

How did you guys first get together?
I moved to Nottingham in 2009 and wanted to put together the company I had always dreamed about. I met Kristy on a clowning course and soon after we put an advert out looking for other female performers to work with. We found the other two pretty much straight away. We were very lucky that the we just clicked straight away and there was an immediate sense that we could all work well together.

What was the clowning course like?
Clowning is wonderful, it can be applied to so many kinds of theatre because it's all about being present in the moment, seeing the world for the first time and the art of bafflement. It's really the most basic form of performance, rediscovering things you often lose as you grow up. I’d recommend it to anyone whether you’re a performer or not.

How would you describe your shows? It’s not really comedy, but there are moments of humour...
It's theatre and storytelling… but comedy is very important within that. All plays should have a good dose of humour to my mind. We like surprising our audiences, visually and dramatically and we try to keep our work inventive and uplifting.

Wanderlust by The Gramophones

Describe your new show Wanderlust. I take it there’s a fair bit of travelling involved?
We travelled out into rural areas to libraries and in mobile libraries primarily in Norfolk and Suffolk and another round that we’re planning soon in Nottinghamshire. We spoke to lots of folk and asked them about their home, why they came and why they stayed. We talked a lot about journeys. We asked them about key points in their lives and gathered so many honest and touching stories. These have inspired the piece and I think they say a lot about the human condition.

So you’ve drawn all these different people’s stories into one narrative?
Our story follows a woman called Wanderlust, travelling throughout the ages on a perpetual search. She's missing something and is on a quest to to complete her journey and find home. But the way she searches is more sinister than you might imagine as she does this by diving into the stories of others and taking parts of their lives and stories as her own. There’s a legend driving her, the legend of Wailing Wood (a traditional norfolk folk tale) that keeps trying to drag her back to the beginning.

What is it about travelling and stories that you love so much? It seems to be the major inspiration on your work…
I guess there’s something that happens to you when you travel. For me there’s a sort of openness that you don't get at home and I seem to see things through different eyes. The world seems more immediate and exciting when you step out of your comfort zone and I guess for us that makes for good drama. We want our audiences to step out of their comfort zone and take a risk too. It's also been a good excuse for a jolly in the name of research.

For your previous show End To End you actually travelled a direct line through Great Britain.
Yes, our journey from Lands End to John O'Groats was the most incredible thing I've ever done. It was exciting, funny and moving and the kindness we received from strangers was overwhelming. It made me feel genuinely good about the world and of course it's where the idea for this new show began.

Wanderlust is based around stories from people you met and that others submitted to you on postcards. Do you have any particular favourites to share?
I was really moved by a woman who had been in a car accident. Her leg had shattered into so many pieces that the doctors said there was nothing they could do and she would never walk again. Before this her daily ritual had been to walk five miles a day even though she was in her seventies. But she was determined that it wasn't over and refused to even tell her husband the initial prognosis. She eventually found a military doctor who was a specialist in the kind of injury she had. He agreed to treat her and through years of support she was able to walk again. She’s now up to three miles a day and is confident she will be able to reach five again.

Wow. That’s a real testament to the power of the human spirit…
The interesting thing for me was that there was no anger in the telling of her story, she said she was grateful and that she didn't know who she was until this happened to her. She even told us how she felt incredibly sorry for the woman who had been driving the car that hit her; how traumatic it must have been for her to see a body flying into her windscreen. I was moved by her kindness, especially in the face of all the pain she had been through.

Did you get any postcards back that were just too weird to fit into a story?
There are so many stories that they can't all be in the show, but theres something in all of them that is interesting or funny, and even though many people don't think they have a story to tell, everyone does. The play is very much inspired by the themes on the stories rather than the stories being directly transferred into the piece. We’re aiming to tour it with accompanying audio that the audience can listen to before or after the show and hear some of what we gathered together for themselves.
 
This isn’t your first time in Edinburgh is it?
We've been three times before. It's exhausting, but also so much fun - we pretty much end up fliering in our sleep. Our shows have always gone down well though and we’ve received a great reaction from the audience - which I guess is why we keep coming back. This year is going to be our most ambitious show yet, with visual projection and live music tied in too.

Apart from performing, what else are you looking forward to doing while you’re up there?
We’re going to climbing Arthur’s Seat. It's become a bit of a tradition, although I got heart palpitations last time and blamed it on altitude sickness. I’ve since been told we're not high up enough so I must just be very unfit.

Wanderlust is performed at Just The Bottle Room in the Mash House in Edinburgh from Saturday 2 to Friday 15 August. Tickets are priced at £6-£7.

The Gramophones website
Just The Tonic at Edinburgh Fringe