SWEET PEA AND THE BEECH TREE

Written and performed by Alice May, Sweet Pea and the Beech Tree was a monologue about a woman’s experience caring for her dying grandmother which I directed.

We showed this piece twice, once for Four Wheel Drive’s first Scratch Night at Friargate Theatre in York and once at Patch York for Aesthetica’s first Fringe Festival.

The script has changed a lot over time, but the challenge of directing a raw single actor show with multirolling, all stemming through the performer’s own life story manifested as a swirl of emotion and memory, has remained.

We used props as puppets, created emotion out of movement and voice, and told a sweet, sad, possible universal story about the long, complex road to loss.