The Legend of Shy Woman’

To kick issues off, may you introduce your self to our readers and provides us a way of what Wyld Lady: The Legend of Shy Woman is all about? What sparked the thought and pulled you towards creating this piece?

Hello! I’m Isabel, and I’m a author and performer from New York Metropolis. Wyld Lady: The Legend of Shy Woman is my solo present that follows the titular Shy Woman’s try to develop into cool, fascinating, and skilled. Sadly, her solely good friend—except for her densely populated imaginary clique—is her therapist, who is definitely only a six-year-old for whom she babysits.

I began writing the present to reckon with feeling just like the shyest lady in the whole world. Apparently, I didn’t communicate my total first yr of elementary faculty, and I’ve solely made incremental developments in my social abilities ever since. In all seriousness, although, I’ve all the time felt fairly embarrassed by how intensely I expertise social nervousness. I’ve tried pushing it down and hiding it, and that’s by no means precisely helped. Wyld Lady has been a possibility to really specific it and settle for it—by legend, of all mediums: the theatre.

Shy Woman feels directly deeply private and immediately recognizable. How a lot of her is drawn from your individual experiences, and the way a lot is invention or imagined as an alter-ego?

Shy Woman definitely stemmed from my very own life, however she’s grown right into a sweeter, purer, gentler creature all her personal. I began writing to her from a spot of disgrace, and solely years later have I spotted that I may solely dream to be as optimistic and tender and ‘Wyld’ a girl as she is. She’s mythic in her Brontë-sister-level eager for real love, in addition to in her passionate makes an attempt at music and dance (slight spoiler alert).

Humor can lower deep like a scalpel and defend like a defend—and it appears to be your most pure language. Why did comedy really feel like the suitable car for Shy Woman’s story? Or was it, in some methods, the one voice she may communicate in?

GORGEOUS QUESTION! Pardon me whereas I weep. Okay, I’m again! 😀

I really feel like this has been my life’s very riddle. Ever since I used to be little, humor has been a means for me to each reveal and conceal myself. However I feel, for Shy Woman, it’s not how she hides — it’s simply what emerges from her pure and hilarious coronary heart. Humor is in the end Shy Woman’s loveliest high quality. She’s so fixated on how shy and loser-ish and unloved she thinks she is that she doesn’t even discover how epically, powerfully humorous she has been all alongside.

All through the efficiency, you slip between varied characters, voices, and views. How did you develop this multi-layered model of storytelling, and what does it will let you seize about Shy Woman’s interior world?

I’m obsessive about doing characters. That’s how I fell in love with appearing within the first place. I don’t assume I’ve ever felt safer than once I’m cloaked within the impenetrable armor of an eccentric character. Firstly of the pandemic, I began arising with these ridiculous characters and recording movies of myself as them. Then I wished to weave them right into a narrative — and what narrative do I do know higher than a story of socially awkward late-bloomerhood? That means, I may preserve the analysis gentle.

The roles these characters play in Shy Woman’s world are impressed by moments from my very own life, profoundly exaggerated for dramatic impact: hiding from my roommate by going to mattress when the solar continues to be out; cowering within the face of my scary boss; chasing gynecologists round city to repair my challenge of being bodily unable to lose my virginity to a person I used to be in love with (a.okay.a. didn’t really feel remotely snug with). The personas are all fantastically weird as a result of Shy Woman’s tackle the world is sort of fantastically weird.

You additionally selected to hold it alone onstage. How did you land on the solo format over ensemble, and what helps you maintain the bodily and emotional depth evening after evening?

I used to be too shy to ask anybody else to be in it with me! Simply kidding—sort of. I used to be drawn to the shape due to my love of character work. It permits me to play with these chameleonic fast adjustments, that are my favourite issues ever. The viewers is nearly fully what helps me maintain the depth of carrying it alone. The viewers is the magic elixir that really brings the present to life. They’re Shy Woman’s counsel, and their help retains her (and me) going.

You labored carefully with director Cameron King in shaping the piece. What did that collaboration convey out—whether or not in tone, construction, or efficiency—that you simply won’t have found by yourself?

Cameron is the opposite magic elixir that has introduced the present to life. She and I met at LaGuardia Excessive College in New York Metropolis, the place we had been, respectively, two very cool and really uncool thirteen-year-olds. She has spent the previous three years creating the present with me, and all of the funniest and most memorable points of the present have come from her. She is hilarious and intuitive, and is aware of learn how to elevate a seemingly random second into one thing totally iconic. The Blowjob Ballet? All her thought. (If that piques your curiosity, do come and see the present!)

The present has been described as “a love letter to anybody who’s ever believed they’re not cool sufficient.” Has performing it felt cathartic for you? And what’s probably the most memorable response you’ve obtained from somebody who noticed themselves in Shy Woman?

Oh my God, it’s been so cathartic. I’ve carried out it for strangers, household, pals, crushes, enemies, elders, and people to whom I’m an elder. And the viewers is closely concerned within the present. Direct eye contact is sustained (how’s that for shy?). It has been so releasing to look all these folks within the eye and sort of proclaim, “Yeah, that is who I’m,” and be met with a lot encouragement and laughter and acceptance.

I’ve gotten such affirming responses. Somebody in Edinburgh messaged me after a present, telling me all about their experiences feeling shy and alone. They ended the message with, “Thanks for in the present day. I cried a couple of instances and felt an incredible sense of kinship.” That made me cry a couple of instances and really feel an incredible sense of kinship. I feel what was so fantastic about Edinburgh was discovering how folks of all completely different demographics associated to it—how even a 60-year-old man can have an interior Shy Woman.

And now Shy Woman is touring—actually. From barns and taco basements to New York, Edinburgh, and now London, how has the piece developed with every new viewers? And what does this Southwark Playhouse debut signify for you?

The earliest iterations of Wyld Lady had been at these very unconventional areas round New York. These set-ups confirmed us how crucial it was to immerse the viewers in the entire motion (i.e., Shy Woman makes an attempt to lose her virginity on a desk stuffed with seated patrons). This was the place we honed in on the piece’s juxtaposition—telling a narrative about this intensely timid woman who’s doing all these intensely un-timid issues in actual time.

Edinburgh was this celestial area of inspiration. It was an opportunity to witness these magnificent, distinctive artists and belong to a group—Shy Woman’s deepest want. However London. Oh, London. Nobody loves the English like Shy Woman. Her most romantic reminiscence is a scene from My Honest Girl. When she fantasizes about her lackluster American crush, she provides him a British accent. She thinks intercourse should really feel like a lustful look throughout a Downton Abbey dinner desk. It looks like each a miracle and probably the most plain factor on the planet to be taking Shy Woman to her dream residence.

Shy Woman longs for the traditional badges of “cool”—intercourse, cigarettes, new pals. Have been you satirizing these cultural myths, or reflecting your individual relationship with them? And has your thought of “cool” shifted over time?

I used to be positively extra reflecting by myself difficult relationship with them. I used to be so ashamed of how late-bloomer-y I felt all through highschool and school. I related having intercourse and smoking and ingesting and drugging (that may be a verb, proper?) with capital-C Cool folks. It was as if these Cool Individuals had obtained some type of guide with directions on advancing additional and additional up the ladder of adolescent debauchery. And this guide had in some way missed my doorstep — or I had missed the supply whereas inventing comparatively chaste love tales in my head, or visiting the orthodontist, or no matter different less-than-cool pastime I used to be as much as again then.

I suppose I nonetheless have this unconscious need for folks to assume I’m extra skilled than I’m — though my baby-deer-like disposition in all probability precludes anybody from believing that I used to be doing Molly at age twelve or had a triple-digit physique rely by age twenty. However my definition of cool has completely shifted over time. I used to assume being cool meant being in style at school and smoking cigarettes out of aesthetic necessity. Now I feel nearly everybody I’ve ever met is fairly cool. I imply, being a human is… like… humiliatingly weak. And we’re all getting up and strolling down the road and attempting to attach regardless of that. To me, that’s about as cool because it will get.

For many individuals with social nervousness, the thoughts turns into a sort of hidden stage—rehearsed conversations, personal rituals, imagined companions. Has that interior life felt extra like a burden, or a supply of artistic energy for you?

Interior life is my final refuge. As a baby, I might repeatedly retreat into imaginary worlds; I did so nearly compulsively. However once I look again on it now, I notice I might enterprise inwards at instances of heightened loneliness. It’s a real love of a coping mechanism. This deep connection to interior life has made creativity not solely my pleasure, however my sustenance — daily-bread-type power. (Sorry, that was bizarre.)

For many who acknowledge themselves in Shy Woman, what have you ever discovered about turning shyness right into a power? Are there small acts of braveness you’d genuinely advocate?

I severely assume shy persons are probably the most valuable folks on the planet. I don’t even have good phrases to articulate it. It’s identical to, “Woah, you’re so valuable, I really like you.” I feel that’s my advice. In the event you think about the shyest a part of your self as a tiny pet or the cutest four-year-old child in the whole world and say, “Woah, you’re so valuable, I really like you” — I really feel like that will assist. Additionally, write a present about being shy for…

And at last—trying forward, what sorts of tales or themes are you most wanting to discover subsequent?

I’m being drawn towards some type of story concerning the seek for unconditional love and the divine, and transcending this mortal type. And one thing a few travelling carnival. Additionally, maybe a villain origin story. Clearly, I’m figuring out some bizarre stuff in my unconscious.

Ebook your tickets now at Southwark Playhouse earlier than Shy Woman takes her last bow!

That was our dialog with Isabel Renner on the wit, chaos, and coronary heart behind Wyld Lady: The Legend of Shy Woman. Share your ideas with us on X/Twitter and Instagram, and uncover extra unique interviews and options over at CelebMix!