THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Emily, I'm really excited to hear all about your play. Can you start off by telling us a bit about yourself, about your background as a writer and how Wormholes came about?
I was a national newspaper journalist for quite a while, I was working at The Independent when the paper closed in 2016, and then a freelance journalist, but I found that I wasn't really being stretched by it. You get to the point where you can just write something kind of standing on your head. I'd always wanted to write a novel. I joined the Faber novel writing course, which was lovely and I met lots of other aspiring authors. And I also learnt how not to write a novel. I took the 'show not tell' idea to the extreme and wrote a novel where my protagonists did not talk about their feelings at all. That didn't really work! Then I tried writing another novel, which was a bit better. I was thinking, Well, what else can I do? I'd started working in telly by that point, on and off for factual TV for US channels – National Geographic, Discovery Science, Paramount – then I was like, I'm actually pretty good at the telling.
The opposite of 'the showing'?
Yes, then I wrote a couple of ten minute little plays, and then my first full length play, which was about my experiences as a social media editor. That had been my first job at The Independent – I handled all of their social media, and eventually I found I couldn't concentrate on anything. I lost the ability to read, because you're switching between social channels all day long and it really affects your concentration. It was inspired by that, and by thinking, What would you do if your only skill was talking into a camera for five minutes at a time and that's your whole career? What if you want to do something else? How do you get out? There was a growing understanding that social media affects mental health, especially in young people. I entered it into the Liverpool Hope Playwriting Prize, a comedy playwriting prize, and to my surprise I was a finalist. So I was like, Maybe I can do this!
I found it really easy to write and I increasingly am a big believer in pursuing the doors that are already opened rather than hammering away the ones that are closed. One of the judges also sent me a private message saying lovely, lovely things about it as well. Then there was a pandemic, so it didn't get a full staging.
It was called Doing Well, was there some kind of double meaning there?
Yes, it was her going to the camera that she was doing great, and behind the scenes absolutely falling apart and having a real crisis.
Then I wrote Wormholes and it was long listed, and we had a showcase for it that went very well. I applied to the Arts Council, five times, for funding, but I didn't get it. I have heard that it is very hard to get funding from the Arts Council these days, because there's no money. So I then went to Victoria [Yeates, actress], put it on a Kickstarter, and friends, family and lots of kind of active friends all chipped in and we managed to raise a bit of cash. I went back to Marie [McCarthy, Artistic Director of the Omnibus Theatre] and said, I know you still wanted this a year and a half ago, are you still interested? And she said yes! It's been a bit of a mad scramble to put it on, but it is finally happening. I found out last night that I've got a publishing deal for it, so it will be a text that's published as well.
Congratulations! You mentioned the bumps along the road that you hit up against. How do you get past that sort of adversity and keep going to get to the point where you're at now?
I think it's really important to talk about it, and that's probably why I mentioned it because I think when people just talk about the success moments, you don't quite realise what's going on behind the scenes. And I think increasingly the arts are becoming a bit of a closed book to many people that can't afford to access it.
It's knowing that, actually, it's not just me as an individual. I have a really good network of other writer friends who will all go for coffee, and we'll know that we're all in the same boat. That really helps, and also knowing that it may change again, we might get a Labour government and they might take an interest in the arts [the interview was conducted just prior to Labour's victory in the election]. Solidarity is really important, sharing the ups and the downs. I went to a friend of a friend's book launch last night, and knowing the backstory really helps. You're more willing to celebrate with them when you know it's not been an easy, glamorous journey.
I actually like to hear about the struggles. I write this Substack, 'Working Differently,' and it is about the different ways that people have set up their work life to work for them. Quite often, it's like “well, this cost money” or “I moved out of London to Europe so I could pursue my artistic dream” or whatever. There's always compromises along the route, or things you have to let go of.
Tell me about Wormholes. What's the genesis of the play? Where's the inspiration for it, and what's the journey been like bringing that to fruition?
It's quite personal, but I didn't realise it was when I started writing it. It was another 'write a quick 10 minute mini scratch night' thing.
What is a scratch night?
If you're one of the people selected to participate, they pair you with an actor, you write something quickly, from scratch, and you put it on. It'll be five or six different 10 minute things and an audience will come see it for a fiver. It's all very rough and ready. I think it was for Rapid Write Response at Theatre503, they do these thematic scratch nights once a month.
I had this concept of a woman who ended up in mental health facility, and there were these other women, coming up and talking to her. Then I was like, 'Why is she there?' I decided it was a man who in some way put her there. I expanded it a bit, and shared it with a couple of my amazing writerly friends and they were like, There's something in this like, keep going.
It was inspired by something that had happened to me. I wrote more, and when I got to the end I realised it was all kinds of bad relationships with boyfriends, and boys and young men who I wasn't in a relationship with as well. It was a string of just horrible, manipulative, controlling, abusive incidents. That happened throughout my 20s. I'm 40 now, so I have some distance from it and I'm able to change things to make it work as a story.
Once we knew that it was going to go on at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham, I really wanted to sense-check it with survivors of domestic abuse and coercive control. I didn't want to feel like it was just me saying, 'This is what an abusive relationship is like, this is what a controlling relationship is like.' I guess I wondered, Is this authentic? Is it genuine? For other women that have been through this kind of thing, who might have been in a marriage or a relationship for 10, 20 years, who might have had it much worse than me? Is it the same for women who are not white, or women who are from a different class?'
I know the statistics from Refuge [UK-based charity supporting women who are victims of domestic abuse]. One in four women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetimes and it happens particularly to younger women, but not always, and it is not affected by class, race, background, anything like that. I spoke to Refuge and they kindly agreed to be our partners on this. Then we had some amazing workshops with survivors, and with Victoria, the actor who has done a sort of reading for all these different women. They have really given me a lot of confidence in the story, because they said things like, 'It was like you're in my head'. They really got behind it and said, 'Yes, this is exactly what it's like; you have covered all of the red flags.' They were picking bits out and saying, 'That was what happened to me!' That really made me feel a lot more confident in the story. And they said to me that it's important for people to see it. That's given me a lot of validation and trust that this is worth telling.
Were there points where you felt like you had to edit it to be faithful to, and make sure that it reflects the experience of, women you've spoken to?
I did a lot of research beforehand, so by the time I showed the survivors it was already in pretty good shape. I'm also co-writing a book at the moment that we are just about to submit to agents that's about narcissism, so I've been delving quite deep into narcissistic personality disorder as well. A big thing that happens at the beginning of relationships with narcissists is they do a lot of love bombing, so that was something I wanted to include. I think (and other people and survivors may say differently!) I'm very empathetic, I'm very trusting and will give people the benefit of the doubt.
From what they told me, at first you can just brush things off. Then it becomes 'day in and day out'. It kind of has to be for it to be counted as abuse, manipulation, coercive control – it's sustained. If it is just a one off, that's not abuse, it is just 'a bad day'. But then the love bombing is retracted, one bad day becomes another bad day. You can be in a relationship for a year and then you think, It's been a bit off but they were really great at the beginning, so maybe I'll get that back. I've been in that and I completely understand how that happens. And the problem is not really for us, the people who've experienced it, to go, Okay, in future I will recognise the signs. It's for it not to happen. For them to sort themselves out and not blame the people around them for their own thoughts.
What's important about telling the story right now, what do you want the audience take away from it?
Well, this all got a lot worse during the pandemic, and a lot of it was hidden. People were cut off from their networks, and were then trapped. I think we are starting to acknowledge that this happens. But I think we still have a long way to go in regards to our legal system, our politics, the police, and in understanding what it's like from the inside.
How did Victoria Yeates become involved with the play?
I interviewed her a while ago when she was doing The Crucible and while we were talking, we found out that my neighbour was her landlord. Then I invited her to something, and then she invited me to something, and we just kept in touch over the years. We're quite good friends now. It slowly grew into a nice collaborative, creative relationship.
Was her involvement in Wormholes collaborative? Were you writing it as you were talking to her about it?
No, I wrote it and then I showed it to her. I was quite nervous, because I knew she liked my writing. But it's still quite a big ask to someone who's done lots of TV and film and is very glamorous to come in and star in your one woman show. She almost instantly said yes!
Has it been strange seeing her bring your words and the story you've told to life in rehearsals?
No, she's just an amazingly talented, very versatile actor. She brings so much emotion to it and it just feels really alive. She brings all of herself to it. It's watching a professional do what they're meant to do. I'm just always in awe whenever I see her do it.
What do you think are the risks of telling a story like this?
I guess I was thinking about – and probably a lot of this comes from the workshops you've done – the kind of effect you imagine it having on people who have suffered abuse coming to see it? What obligation do you feel to them as people engaging with the story? It is a tough watch. We've tried to infuse some levity, or, well, there is humour in it, there are jokes. We will see whether they are bad jokes or not once we have a bigger audience, but we've definitely tried – I should be held responsible if the humour doesn't work.
Also, it is a work of fiction, but that's not to say that it isn't going to resonate with people who've experienced it. I hope it means that, because I'm sharing this with the audience, they will feel connected, and it might give them a bit more confidence to share their stories in return. Maybe there will be some interesting conversations at the bar afterwards. We are also going to try and offer something with Refuge as well. Obviously, there will be trigger warnings, and it's quite clear from the blurb on the fliers what you're in for. I had to be quite transparent about that, even though it kind of meant giving away some of the story. I thought it was important for people to know what they're coming into. It also has the advantage of not being very long.
I definitely feel the responsibility, but I feel that speaking to the survivors has kind of helped reassure me on that front that it's okay. And it might even be quite therapeutic in some ways, hopefully.
How does narrative do that?
I think it makes you feel like you're not alone. This is why personal essays and memoirs are so popular right now, it's like we want to connect with other people. We're very bad at it. I guess that's what I'm aspiring for. I also hope that people will come to it who have no experience of domestic abuse and coercive control and financial control that business, and they go, I get it. If one person is helped in that way, that will make me feel like this is worthwhile.
The title reminds me of a section of Girl Interrupted where Susanna Kaysen uses the metaphor of being dropped into a parallel universe where her narrator is talking about this mental breakdown that she has. Do you think there's something around science fiction metaphors and the discourse around abuse of mental health?
I absolutely love sci-fi. The first failed novel I wrote was a sci-fi novel. I think one of the things that happens when you're in a relationship where someone is gaslighting you is you try to think of ways that you could have behaved differently in order to avoid the bad things happening. You're thinking, 'Could I've gone down this path or that path, and is there an escape route?' So I suppose the wormholes are, 'Is there a way to shoot out of this life into another parallel universe?' There's also an actual motif about a disease called guinea worm. The actor talks about that. It acts as a metaphor for an abusive relationship. I'll let you watch it to discover more!
I'm going to risk some levity, because like to we ask everyone that we interview this. What's the best thing about being Emily Jupp right now?
My mum has gone to France, and she's left me with her two very adorable cats and they're quite kitteny still. So we've got our giant cat, Kiki who's… enormous, like a Maine Coon cat. And then these two little kittens. The best thing about being me right now is getting to watch Kiki the giant cat being incredibly scared of the two tiny little kittens trying to eat his food and chase after him around the living room. That's pretty good!
