Sam HH reflects on her Nest Residency

The Nest Residency gave me so much more than I had ever imagined it could.  So this is not just about what I did but what I gained. Not just creatively but personally. I had never been given space like this before. It felt greedy. Privileged. It felt overwhelmingly scary. I felt guilt – taking up space when it could have been used for someone else. Especially as I felt like I was maybe tricky.

When I first applied in August 2022 and was granted an October R&D I applied with two ideas – spend time writing a play with access embedded or have time to look at more accessible working practices in theatre. Not just about access but looking at how we make.  The second was chosen by Talking Birds. 

The residency had to be moved a couple of times because I was too chronically ill to leave my house. I am a disabled, ND, director, writer, access consultant and mum/carer to two ND children. Or I try to be all those things – spread thinly across all. Always feeling I am awful at all of it. 

After having Covid in January 2022 it complicated all my existing conditions and made me extremely ill – giving me extreme long covid – cognitive, fatigue and mobility. My life dramatically changed and by the time I started the residency in March 2023 I had no idea how I could manage to keep working. I had fear. So much fear. Still so very ill. Also sorrow and anger too. How the World had stopped and then everyone else just got to carry on. That those of us affected were invisible. Unimportant. Collateral damage. People talked about the impact of lockdowns on the industry, losses in money and projects. No one cared about the humans effected.

 I didn’t know how I could manage a morning, let alone a full day or 10. The week leading up to the residency I was so overwhelmed, that I didn’t sleep. Day before so overwhelmed, that I lost speech. Because I hadn’t been out anywhere for over a year without my family and I had hardly been able to leave the house apart for medical appointments. I had a PA with me – I didn’t really know how to use one yet. (Everyone automatically expects you to know how to do this. I had had to move the R&D also until I could find one and this was hard too. Being reliant when I have always been fiercely independent). 

 It was all an odd feeling. All of it. I felt a hundred versions of me away from the director I had once been. I had worked in my bedroom for over a year – across from the space I had been so very ill in. It was suffocating. 

Talking Birds are exceptional. I thought I was being tricky saying I could manage two days a week only. This is where the greed and guilt came from. Space is a desperate necessity in the Arts. Talking Birds offer space, beautiful spaces to give time to ideas with no emphasis on sharing.  I thought asking to work 2 days a week across weeks was awful. I then met other creatives there that needed the exact same. Because so many creatives have to work around other commitments. Parenting, as a carer, Grads with 3 zero hour contracts having to earn to live, people who are new to creating – daring to dream, disabled people with low energy reserves or having to work around PA availability. This exact place was what led me to the space in the first place. How do we make an industry that is truly accessible and inclusive to all? Why are working practices the way they are? And that’s the only way. Who and when were they created and why were we still using them? Do they really provide great conditions for making brilliant work – if so – for who? When talking about access the conversation turns to audiences. The access in venues. Practicalities.  Not Wellbeing and care. Being pushed into Solo practices. So much more. 

My thoughts were vast. From gathered, lived experience of trying to navigate this industry. Having had to stop years ago due to illness to try and return.  Accessibility in theatre is often diminished and tick boxed. It still requires people to fit the token offerings. It is bolted on as an afterthought. It is in fact so vast I couldn’t consider all of it. Only aspects. 

I met with other creatives and discussed how they had managed to create still after becoming chronically fatigued and unwell. How digital forms are more accessible. How much family members are relied upon to provide access support. The hidden work of disabled creatives that is like a job on top of the job. Despite being so ill they make work because of it. About it. Taking us into rooms most don’t have to access. Because shouldn’t the Arts be about telling the stories we wouldn’t know about otherwise? But should disabled people be subjected to only making work shut away in rooms alone. Of course not. But it happens. A lot. I felt and feel this now is my only option. 

I noted how much work is created about the sea, forests and open expanses by chronically ill creatives. The need to BREATHE. How I had been fixated with this too.

How I needed to stop being in spaces and places that made me feel wrong. Conversations that began with “oh my friend at the…. Is helping me to get a commission there.” Lack of accountability, truthful reporting and  transparency in the Arts. Stop just employing your mates. The power organisations hold and how it is used. How easy it is to even connect with beings in a building. Or who to? 

It took time to sink into it and use the time in a way I needed, not how I thought I should use it – and be productive, create evidence and not constantly thinking about this Blog. (Which has taken a long time to write due to wanting to write EVERYTHING). That space is precious, the self made pressure that I needed to use every second well. Actually amazing  empty space gave way to thoughts never thought before. Wonders. 

I attended the Stage Future of Theatre Conference. Not one disabled representative was on the panel. They discussed access and flexible working in the theatre but not in relation to those that need it the most maybe. Head of ITC, talked about the hidden bullying, discrimination and brutality in theatre. I talk all the time with people who share these stories – with a confidentiality and fear. 

When I applied I so wanted to discover other ways of working. A way to create a different theatre industry – embedded with care, with true access, with a way to work that challenged the way we have been made to work for hundreds of years it seems. I tried to find out who and why the four week rehearsal process was established. Why R&D’s were generally 5 days. I recalled from my studies many years ago, brilliant ensembles across Europe who worked so differently. Why we didn’t here? or who does?

I used the time to catch up on courses, purposefully chosen as I could access them anytime. I used the space to write, to learn – without being interrupted to make a strawberry jam bagel or co-regulating a child who is overwhelmed. I looked at what wellbeing really looked like and added in Mindfulness and mediation into the start of each day. Open writing practice. 

I had a couple of days on my own with no PA. Tricky, as navigating physical spaces was harder for me. Had to get help getting there. But it was confidence building and blissful too. Completely in the silence. A drift of Dez’s music. Lunchtime conversations with the amazing Talking Birds.  I find lunchtimes hard to navigate as sensory overwhelm. But gentle conversations about their own creative practices that aren’t standard industry and the benefits were needed. The honesty and openness of Talking Birds was soul refreshing. 

 What I gained from it was incredible – I learnt to leave my home to work again and from this how to access the world again with less fear. Who does a Residency to learn to leave the House! I learnt how brilliant not being interrupted every 2 minutes by my family was, and how much better I could focus. I found others who worked differently and chatted to them. I looked at how I could move forward. What I wanted. What changes I wanted for the industry nationally, locally and for myself. I noted until I had found me and found a solidness to working differently, I couldn’t go forward with anything else. I have, since doing this residency not only enabled me again creatively but also in my whole life. I made decisions about my disability and what I needed rather than being dictated to. I bought a wheelchair. I can leave the house without worrying I could just brain stop. I made decisions about what I might focus on next. I kept returning to connectedness – I am about to launch a project locally. I joined China Plates’ The Optimists to equip myself with how to Produce. But mostly I recognised that the biggest thing was how wonderful having my own space was. Second year of A levels, a million years ago in the mid 90’s, we studied A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf.  I moved my working into a summerhouse built by Husband and son in our teeny garden. A room of one’s own. I spent two months trying to write this. In my head – filled early hours of insomnia with a desk metres away. I couldn’t I tried so hard. A week into  my sanctuary, trees flickering the sunlight, birds and I can now breathe. Breathe enough to write again. Breathe enough to start to put all my schemes into action. A Room to breathe.