In this unique double-bill, two actor-writers, Grace Kirby and Peter Macqueen, perform their own one-person shows, each directed by the other.
Nancy’s Orange is inspired by Grace’s experiences in a part-time job delivering NHS prescriptions to patients, often elderly and isolated, in the beautiful but remote countryside of the North Pennines and along the Cumbrian stretch of Hadrian’s Wall. Brief encounters happen on doorsteps, in gardens, in kitchens and even on balconies, revealing lives richly lived through stories of love and loss, sadness and joy, infused with poetry and humour. Through meetings with an unforgettable cast of characters including Captain Underpants, a priestly imposter and a satnav with a mind of its own, she begins to question how we care for and perceive our elderly neighbours, and invites us to do the same.
As well as a successful actor and writer, Peter Macqueen is a keen amateur naturalist with a particular passion for butterflies and moths. The Butterfly Collector brings both these strands of his life together by exploring very personal experiences of the effects of climate change. He draws on childhood memories of happy holidays collecting butterflies (he uses a camera now!) and sets them against the drastic attempt to rescue that collection (and those memories) fifty years later, when Storm Desmond flooded more than 7,000 homes in Cumbria, including his own. The play is set some time in the future. Storms are so frequent they have serial numbers instead of names and butterflies remember them? Are too few to count. Meet a man sat on a tower of furniture a chair on a box on a table having a picnic. Is the water rising or receding? And even though it’s practically the end of the world, there are moth jokes.
