Sparks: debut play by Jessica Butcher at VAULT Festival 2018
Love, Loss and Life after your mother dies of Multiple Sclerosis
Sparks is a new play by writer-performer Jessica Butcher exploring grief, loss, worth, love and fantasy. It runs during VAULT Festival 2018 between Wednesday 21 and Sunday 25 February 2018. Butcher paints a witty and entertaining portrait of dating in the modern age: our romances, our shortcomings, and how desperately we will use any distraction to shy away from grief and loneliness. After the loss of her Mother to Multiple Sclerosis, Butcher decided to explore the impact of grief and how it works in our minds and consciousness. As a universal emotion, Sparks opens the door to grief and welcomes it in for a proper conversation. Acclaimed singer and songwriter Anoushka Lucas creates an original score for the play which she performs live on stage during the show. Sparks is directed by Jessica Edwards.
” But it took fifteen years of disconnected sparks to do the damage.
To stop her beautiful fantastical brain from connecting.”
Butcher plays Lila, our guide through the story as we follow her whirlwind romance – the first meet, dates, fucks, fights, breakups. We watch as it falls apart. We are the best friend and confidante, and she leads us through her exploits with great humour. But as we navigate through the multiple realities along the way – what really happened between her and X, what might have happened and a fantasy version – we discover her grieving heart and the uncertainty of how to move on
Jessica Butcher explains: “I wrote Sparks because I wanted to talk about grief and being a woman in this world, and how the patriarchy lives in us and has been inherited from generations of misogyny. I wanted to make someone who was confronting all the different sides of herself. She is kind, funny, weird, sexy, horrible and confused. I want to explore how our minds work with fantasy and cruel reality. I want to dive into Love. This play is for my Mum.”
Jessica Butcher is an actress who most recently performed in Offside (Edinburgh Festival 2017 and UK Tour) and is known for playing Lucy Fuller in Camilla Whitehill’s award-winning play Where Do Little Birds Go?Sparks is her debut play. Her second play, Boots will also premiere in London in March 2018.
Anoushka Lucas is a multi-instrumentalist singer and songwriter and has composed an original score forSparks that forms an intrinsic thread within the story. Her music has been championed by Jazz FM (Love Supreme winter 2013) and Radio 2 (Jamie Cullum show, BBC Introducing 2017). Composing for theatre includes: Klook’s Last Stand (Book by Che Walker, Park Theatre 2014 and NAMT, Oct 2017) and The Etienne Sisters (Book by Che Walker, Stratford East 2015). As an actor, Anoushka has performed in Jesus Christ Superstar (Mary Magdalene, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival), Murder on the Orient Express (Pianist, dir: Kenneth Branagh, 20th Century Fox), Been So Long (dir: Tinge Krishnan, BFI/Film4/Greenacre).
Jessica Edwards is a freelance director and Artistic Director of Flipping the Bird. She has associate directed for the Almeida, the Jamie Lloyd Company, the Young Vic and in the West End. She is Director of drag-girl-super-group DENIM, who are associate artists of Soho Theatre. Recent directing includes: Denim: World Tour (Soho Theatre / Underbelly); Punts (Theatre503); Revolutions (Arcola / Old Vic Lab); The Gulf (Old Vic Lab); Torch(Latitude / Edinburgh Festival 2016); Haters Make You Famous (Almeida Theatre); Queering Marlowe (Jamie Lloyd Company / Duke of York’s Theatre); White Hot & Weak (Old Vic New Voices Festival); The Box (Latitude / Theatre Delicatessen); The Itinerant Music Hall (Lyric Hammersmith / Watford Palace / GDIF / Latitude); Jekyll & Hyde (Southwark Playhouse / Assembly Edinburgh).
Sparks by Jessica Butcher at VAULT Festival 2018
The Vaults, Leake Street, London SE1 7NN
Wednesday 21 February – Sunday 25 February at 19:45
Matinee on Sunday 25 February at 16:45
Tickets: £11.50
Box office: https://vaultfestival.com or 07598 676202
Social media: #SPARKSplay / #VAULT2018 / @VAULTFestival