This week I was asked to write a short biography ahead of Moving Parts: Newcastle Puppetry Festival where I have received a bursary to study for the week. The idea of the bursary is that I bring my skills back to East Yorkshire and feed them into my practice, especially with Beverley Puppet Festival, Indigo Moon Puppet Theatre, and Castaway Music Theatre Goole.
I cannot tell you how excited I am! I had seen Moving Parts advertised and assumed I would not be able to afford the full week, (which is of course what I had my beady eyes on - the opportunity to live, eat, sleep and breathe puppetry for a week? Yes please!) I am an artist and a single parent, so it means a lot to me to have been offered the bursary.
Writing my biography, which I imagine is needed for publicity things and to give people an idea who I am, was an interesting exercise. I don't remember having written one before. Or at least one I'd weighted so heavily. Perhaps my UCAS personal statement is a decent comparison. But this time people will see it?! Heavens.
So here it is. Complete with rambly bits.
"Zoe is an actress and street theatre performer based in Hull, UK’s City of Culture."
Yes I am.
"West-Midlands born, Zoe relocated to study drama at the University of Hull..."
Yes I did! I am from Nuneaton, a small town in the Midlands. Nuneaton has a little Arts Centre where I started off in youth theatre groups and helping out follow-spot lighting and such-like. I eventually joined Sudden Impulse Theatre Company who stage a lot of their shows there when I was fifteen. Ten years later I was pleased to be able to perform with them again as Carol in Shakers, directed by Richard Shields, who is a fantastic actor and inspired me to take up performing as a career.
"...and currently works with Other Lives, Beverley, Indigo Moon Puppet Theatre, Hull, and Same Difference Street Theatre, Leeds, among others."
These wonderful companies regularly have me along to work with them. I am very, very pleased that they do!
"Whilst training at Hull University, Zoe worked with RashDash, and Middle Child director Paul Smith."
The two shows I worked on with Abbie and Helen, who became RashDash, and Paul Smith were two of the best I've been in. She Moved Through The Fair was the show that made me realise I could keep up physically, (I was a pretty round child/teenager, I don't mind admitting it.) Jack and the Beanstalk was perhaps the first time I had played a character who wasn't a boy or an old lady, (this is in no way a complaint, I am a character girl at heart,) who had LEGS. My goodness.
"One of her favourite roles whilst at university was Anna, a puppet maker in On Emotion."
This play was a really gorgeous experience. As well as being directed by the wonderful Seda Yildiz and working with a fantastic cast and crew, I had the opportunity to help make a Bunraku-style puppet. Like my character, I was tasked with sculpting our puppet a face.
"Other work includes Ensemble 52’s Whitsun Weddings, performed on the train service between Hull and London Kings Cross and Other Lives’ Under Milk Wood at East Riding Theatre, where she rediscovered the pure joy of fast-paced multi-rolling."
I love performing in non-theatre spaces, so a moving train is of course up there with my favourites! I played one of the brides on the train, each couple had a scene and were each from a different decade.
Under Milk Wood is actually the most recent show I was in, in February this year. It is dubbed as "a play for voices" and is an absolute dream to work on for this reason among many others.
"Zoe’s other hat is Shipmates Youth Leader at Castaway Music Theatre in Goole. She also works as a lighting designer and theatre technician."
I have been with Castaway since August 2015 and Shipmates since April last year. I am very proud to be part of an organisation which makes quiality theatre with adults and young people with disabilities.
NSDF 2009 sent me off on a pretty steep technical theatre tangent. I won the Stage Electrics Award For Outstanding Contribution To Lighting and returned to University being viewed as a bit of a lighting expert. I wouldn't have said that I was at all, but was in love with the whole thing enough to throw myself into everything I worked on and find ways through gaps in my knowledge. I worked for a few years at Hull Truck Theatre as a casual technician and then volunteered at events around Hull. I continue to love lighting design and still geek out pretty hard when I look up in an auditorium!
"Zoe counts clowning, puppetry and stilt-walking amongst her skills. She is thrilled to be a part of Moving Parts' inaugural year and can't wait to use the experience in her future practice."
If I'm a lighting geek, then I'm a clown geek also. Physical comedy is my cup of tea. Even when I attempted a radio panel show, I still fell back on the physical stuff, (yes, I know that doesn't really work!)
Stilt-walking is my most recently learned skill, I am fortunate enough to have had some wonderful teaching from Natasha from Same Difference and (touch-wood!) seem to be pretty fearless and therefore not too bad at it at all. I will be let loose on stilts at events this year. I am also learning to unicycle. Which is... let's call that one an ongoing process!
And puppetry. I find puppetry to be a blissful combination of my interests; physical mechanics, comedy, clown, self-reflection, art... performing with puppets takes me to a place I have only really been otherwise whilst doing mask-trance work, (and I wish I could explain it much better than that!) It's the wonderful tunnel-visioned, absorbing kind of performance. Perhaps something about projecting yourself into another object that takes your brain out of itself? Who knows... I imagine that by the time I share my thoughts with you on Monday evening after my first day of workshops and performances, I will be able to word my feelings rather more concisely!
