Christmas 2024 I was invited to lunch with some lovely actors I worked with ten years ago. Four ladies now all in their 60’s and all still happily married, except me. Not that I wasn’t happily married because I was, very happily, but as we all now know nothing is forever and in April 2022 my husband, best friend, writing and business partner died after a short foray with cancer.
The cancer won!
It was at that lunch that one of the ladies suggested that we partner up and write a play together.
I felt excited, thinking about how brilliant it would be to have that companionship of working with someone again, and also getting back on stage.
The last time I had performed was Christmas 2019 in a show that was written by myself and my husband Ricky.
We had been producing shows together for over 30 years, mostly comedy with the occasional book show.
When Covid struck it felt like the final curtain had come down on our theatre company. Little knowing that another curtain was also waiting to come down, but this time on my husband’s life.
The months after his death were strange. I seemed to go full throttle into life, no time to think. There was the mountain of death admin, producing kid’s shows and running my life and business.
About a year later I attempted to write with someone else but I felt decidedly unfunny, and as comedy was my chosen genre I decided to hold fire and keep my creative juices flowing with poetry.
Lots of poetry. All very unfunny! But wonderfully cathartic and dark, dark, dark!
Creativity is a gift in hard situations. When you are engaged in a creative activity it feels like a pressure valve being released.
With this in mind I went back to acting class and did a method acting course and sobbed my way through all my lessons. I joined a choir, and did a comedy improvisation course, all in an attempt to reconnect with myself and feel better.
I tried several different therapies including shamanic healing & sound baths. I went to a variety of different therapists but nothing made me feel like me again.I was irritated and angry, very very angry!
Who was I now? I wasn’t the other half of a pair, I wasn’t a wife, and I wasn’t a 20 year old starting out on life. I was 61, I didn’t know who I was. So, reluctantly, I sought out yet another therapist. This time, I stayed and stayed and stayed!
Slowly I went from despair, to stuck, to sad, to dark and then to light.
My journey of therapy has inspired me to write my new play, ‘Me, My Therapist and I.’ It’s a dark surreal comedy which puts a fun spin on therapy and grief, and what it can motivate us to do in order to cope.
What is usually a difficult and painful subject to talk about can actually make us laugh too!
The play is a two hander and is just 60 minutes long. So there is plenty of time after to grab a drink or head out to dinner.
For more information on’ Me, My Therapist and I,’ please follow the links below.
By Lynn Beaumont
