Brewery Arts Centre
When To Run by Sophie Woolley
Festival 2007
When to Run by Sophie Woolley
Directed by Gemma Fairlie, Produced by Melanie Abrahams
Sophie Woolley has already wowed critics with her one-person play ‘When to Run’. She received rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe festival and sold out a 400 capacity show at the Royal Festival Hall in London.
Written and performed by Sophie Woolley, directed by Gemma Fairlie and produced by Melanie Abrahams, ‘When to Run’ tells the compelling story of four women runners and a man who looks a bit like Tony Soprano. Sophie flits between characters in a beautifully written play of interwoven monologues which are at once hilarious and moving. A neurotic professional, an urban teenage athlete, a secretly miserable life coach and a dog walker who hates exercise. Their lives collide as they pound the pavements of London - with fatal consequences.
A must see for runners and couch potatoes alike.
Directed by Gemma Fairlie and Produced by Melanie Abrahams in association with renaissance one http://www.renaissanceone.com Music by Matthew-Yee King.
“A stunning, electrifying show full of imagination and verve. Sophie Woolley is massively talented and already becoming hugely successful.” Irvine Welsh
“Sophie Woolley occupies the gap between the broad caricature comedy of Little Britain or The Catherine Tate Show and the sharp, dark literary satire of
Martin Amis and Will Self. ” Joe Muggs
“Sophie Woolley’s cleverly interwoven monologues are packed with delicious observations. Woolley really brings the characters to life. There is a great story here with strong characters.” The Stage
“One of the most original young talents in Britain today - and a wonderful performer of her own work. Her use of different voices is astonishing. She's stimulating, exciting and an inspiration.” Blake Morrison
More about Sophie...
Originally aspiring to being a normal writer, Sophie Woolley fell into performing spoken word skits and monologues in discos, cabarets, pubs and literature festivals such as Cheltenham, ICA, Cherry Jam and the GE Club. She soon discovered her ability to perform a remarkable collection of different voices and characters. Secretly wishing she was on television, or being Kathy Burke or Sally Phillips, or being in a play at Edinburgh Festival, she continued to perform on the spoken word circuit, writing satire for style magazines like SleazeNation and Shoreditch Twat and publishing short stories in anthologies.
After a year as an attached writer with Soho Theatre Sophie began to write more theatrically and found the theatre gave her more scope to realise her ideas.
Sophie finished writing When to Run in July and after two days of rehearsals, she launched the play at Edinburgh Festival (her dream come true). The feedback was excellent but Sophie still felt there was more she could make of the play, she just needed a bit of extra help. She knew there must be more she could do than stand up and sit down on a chair – especially in a play about runners. She returned to London and re-rehearsed the play with a new director Gemma Fairlie who came to see the play in Edinburgh (Gemma was assistant director on the award winning Realism at the festival). It is Sophie’s first time working with a theatre director and the results are very exciting.
Sophie is a unique artist, a comic actor with the good fortune of being able to write all her own parts. She has huge stage presence and the ability to convince people that she is whoever she is and make audiences laugh and cry by turns.
Sophie also happens to be deaf. She has been gradually losing her hearing since the age of 18 and now wears two hearing aids. She lipreads and uses interpreters and stenographers for rehearsals and meetings.
Sophie’s hearing loss is one of the reasons why every performance of When to Run is subtitled (with projected powerpoint text) – a rare event in theatre of this kind. Sophie Woolley explains, “I couldn’t bear the thought of performing the sort of play I couldn’t go and watch myself. I’m very happy that When to Run is being subtitled because there is so much exciting arts and culture that deaf and hard of hearing people miss out on. The technology and the know-how is out there, and it’s not that hard to do. There are 9 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK so that’s a really good reason why all plays should be subtitled.”
renaissance one is an agency that curates, programmes and produces poetry, prose and spoken word events. Since 1999, they have spotlighted a range of high-profile and up-and-coming writers with a focus on presenting the best in UK contemporary literature and spoken word. They have produced sell-out shows at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Barbican, Museum of Modern Art (Finland), Miami Book Fair and toured to Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Ireland and Spain. Writers collaborated with include Linton Kwesi Johnson, Rob Gallagher/Earl Zinger, Ali Smith, Paul Beatty (White Boy Shuffle), Ben Okri, Ekow Eshun, Jackie Kay, Gary Younge, Michèle Roberts, Andrea Levy, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Zena Edwards, Charlie Dark and Sophie Woolley. They currently host ‘London Liming’ at the Great Eastern Hotel, a quarterly happening of bite-sized spoken word, mixed with brazilian and soca music.
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