The Roaring Girls are getting beach body ready

[Applause]

[Music]

hello

all right how’s it going um right

i’ll start us off i’m not stood there

oh christ welcome the chaos

so three years ago in 2017

myself rachel and lizzy we went on a

trip to the theater

treat ourselves nice night out and our

mate at the end of the night says

hey girls do you fancy a lift home now

it was very cold it was january so we

gratefully accepted

and her sister was driving so as she

pulled into the lay by outside of the

theater

our slim mate got in the front

now we were immediately met with two

thoughts

number one we should have definitely got

the bus

and number two was that we were now

gonna have to cram ourselves into the

back of a ford fiesta

now i don’t know if you’ve ever seen

three fat lasses try to balance

themselves over the axle of a car

but let me tell you it took a lot of

shoving a lot of giggling

a lot of swearing and how we managed to

close the door was only by the grace of

god

and something magic happened once we

managed to get ourselves

into that little car we had a

conversation that we had never had

before

and it was a conversation about our

bodies and it was joyous and it was full

of laughter

and it was instead of all the things

that we wanted to change

and we knew that we had something

special and so as lizzy and rachel got

out of the car that night

and left me in the middle like an unset

jelly pouring from a mold

i was filled with a promise that there

was a show to be made

so from that beachbody ready was born

and you just saw the first 40 seconds of

our show

i’m rachel this is shauna lizzie

sarah and jess and we are the roaring

girls

a whole-based theater company that

exists to make work that is fierce

feminist and fun we use our

autobiographical narratives to make work

in order for other people not to feel

quite so alone in the world

we created our last show beachbody ready

to talk about the images that we see in

the media

and how it feels when you don’t look

like the people that you see in

magazines

on tv on your social media timelines

we wanted to create a show that stuck

two fingers up to everything the media

ever said you should look like

lizzy and i graduated from the

university of hull

with our master’s degrees in hand and

started making shows

for a local theatre festival which were

very short performances

and we didn’t realize that a couple

years later we would be surrounded by a

group of incredible people

and we’d be about to embark on our first

national tour

so how do you make a show like beachbody

ready

well it started as we often do by just

having a chat

and we talked and we talked and we

talked some more

all about everything we hated about our

bodies everything we loved

we talked about the beauty industry and

about the things that people had said to

us that stuck with us

and the things that we wish they’d said

instead we told stories we played games

we wrote a lot of lists

we unrolled big pieces of paper filled

them with ideas we covered the walls in

post-it notes

and we laughed until it hurt and then we

cried

a lot because we were putting a voice to

something that we’d never shared before

and then just to balance it out we had a

dance to some lizzo which i can

highly recommend 100 but really the

process was all about

finding our people we worked with an

amazing writer called lydia

lydia merchant who helped us who helped

provide some structure to help

us make sense of everything we were

saying we knew that we wanted to work

with people who were passionate who were

supportive

and people who understood how important

it was to get this right how important

it was to work in a way that was safe in

a way that was kind

and so we made sure that anything that

anyone shared in our room

while it might be questioned and it

might be disagreed with would never be

dismissed

and would never be shared outside that

room without permission

and it is an absolute point of pride to

work with people for whom the well-being

of our team is not merely an

afterthought

so standing here now it is incredible to

look back at how we actually got here

um so when we first did the show we had

no idea

how it was going to go down in front of

an actual paying audience

so on our opening night us three were

waiting backstage

and we were listening to our rowdy

sold-out whole audience entering the

theatre

and i have never felt so sick in my

entire life

i was questioning every decision that

brought me to that point

i looked across to rachel who was just

staring in horror at the wall

uh and i looked across to sarah who had

gone a lovely clammy shade of grey

and looked like she was about to throw

up and we kept asking ourselves and each

other why have we decided to do this

what

what were we thinking is this just pure

self-indulgence what if people don’t

laugh

what if people get up and leave halfway

through we were imagining the worst

basically

nothing could have prepared us for the

response that we got

i had spent months before the first show

preparing myself

for what the audience reaction might be

when i walked out in my swimwear for the

first time on the stage

and i had prepared myself for the

silence

i prepared myself for the groans

prepared myself

for people to avert their gaze but what

i did

not prepare myself for was the raucous

and celebratory cheer that filled the

room

and nobody was sick and nobody laughed

at my belly so that was nice

we were met with such warmth we had

whoops and cheers

and claps at the minute we walked out on

stage it had all been worth it

yeah well i my relationship with my body

has come a long way in three years

and in 2017 in this show here i wore a

swim dress

and it was because the thought of

unveiling my thighs and my stomach

filled me with the most anxious fear and

now

if they had have let me i would have

done this entire talk wearing nothing

but a smile honestly

what is so scary about imperfection

and it hasn’t been the easiest process

for us

online uh some of our advertisements for

beachbodyready were met with a negative

backlash

words like fat disgusting

you are taking beds from cancer patients

and that is something that somebody

actually said

for me and rachel having the audacity to

be fat and wear a swimming castle online

and it was harsh and it was biting

but we clap back with gifts

of fat women dancing and babies wobbling

their bellies

and the words of women far more

articulate than we could ever be

our bodies are not an apology at the

roaring girls

what we always say is that we like

making work with our friends

and as we often talk about things which

are really personal and difficult

it’s great to be in a room where you

know you’re being supported with

kindness

but although we love to make work with

our friends sometimes it is difficult

um often we take things a little bit too

personally

um we find it a little bit easier to get

annoyed or irritated by each other

um but i think the most kind of the

biggest struggle that we have is finding

time to be friends with each other

and whenever we find the space to be

friends it’s always filled with talks of

the work

stuff as well but working with like

working with friends is the greatest

honor the level of well-being and

support increases and well-being is at

the very core of our company

and we always try to provide counselling

sessions whenever we’re working on

projects

to help talk about the difficult

subjects and we’re always there to look

after each other

build each other up and make sure that

we’re all happy and healthy

working this way is essential for us

without putting our well-being at the

forefront of what we do

beachbody ready certainly wouldn’t be

where it is today because it hasn’t

always been easy

uh when we applied for funding the first

time round we were unfortunately

unsuccessful which felt like a bit of a

blur and a bit of a setback

but we were determined and we really

believed in this little nugget of an

idea that we had

and we’d already programmed the show to

be on a whole truck a few months later

so we decided to do it anyway we didn’t

need the money it was fine

but we we scraped enough money together

to pay ourselves 100 pounds each

for six weeks work because we wanted to

be able to pay ourselves something

um and this meant that we had to balance

our day jobs alongside making a show

which was exhausting it meant that a lot

of us were juggling up to three or four

jobs at once

so when we got to rehearsals we would

often be quite ratty with each other

but we were really passionate about this

project and we wanted to put everything

into it

but when you are talking about such raw

and personal and emotional things at the

end of a very long day

naturally there are tensions and tears

and frustrations

now the show beachbody ready for me is

an absolute joy to be a part of

there are still three years on every

single performance these women make me

cry with laughter

because who knows what’s going to come

out of their mouths honestly

but it is also a really emotionally

draining shirt as i said we talk about a

lot of personal things

and there are some moments in the show

three years on i still find difficult to

talk about

but there is always a friend next to me

on stage to pass me a biscuit

or to give my hand a little squeeze and

it’s this support network that

we’ve built up that shawna talked about

which has got us through the not so nice

bits

now in order to make the show we went on

a tour of the north

visiting different theatres as a team

talking and rehearsing in each city

we were invited to talk to a room full

of producers

who represented theaters across the

north of england

we turned up and we listened intently to

all of these incredible

eloquent pieces of work that were

happening across

the north and then we turned up

and we bowled onto stage and we started

doing

a part of our performance and you really

have not known awkward

until you have danced in front of a load

of people

in your swimwear on a thursday afternoon

and it is a room full of people who can

make or break your career

luckily for us that afternoon was

pivotal

to the creation of the show and the tool

that we did to manage to secure us some

partnerships and some funding

and that was crucial in us being able to

expand our network to find new

collaborators to work with and new

supporters

but also crucially to be able to engage

with our audiences

with the women for whom this show was

made and so we went out into the

community and we spoke to them and we

listened to their experiences

and it led us to staunch supporters like

disability blogger accessible rach and

absolutely inspirational babes like the

shi

siders a t-side based girl gang who

tackle isolation

through friendship and really inspired

us to be more positive

and we wanted to involve their voices in

the project so we created a zine

a companion piece to the theater show

something tactile

to take home and remind you to keep

talking we filled it with art with

poetry with articles

all commissioned from the people that we

we’d spoken to

and we gave a free copy to everyone who

came to see our show

in edinburgh and that was the next step

of the journey

we did 25 shows in 26 days

at the edinburgh festival fringe and i’m

still having flashbacks

it is intense it is stressful and it is

exhausting everywhere in edinburgh is up

a hill

and we walked for miles and we built and

took down a set every day

and uh worst of all we spent a small

fortune on a pint every evening

but it was the most wonderful experience

we had

wonderful venue staff really vibrant

loud responsive audiences

and we got to see so many shows and

connect to other people who are making

work about their bodies

it was great it wasn’t all smooth

sailing there was a

fateful night where these two shared a

bed and woke up with a thud as the frame

collapsed beneath them

we slept in the kitchen on for like

three days

it was great there were so many

successes that we can’t count them all

five star reviews being a recommended

show

from the guardian and the british

council

and the things that we could never

foresee like the day

that i got a text from an old school

friend asking me if it was my show in an

article

on the front page of the bbc news app

and it was

following on from edinburgh we have

achieved things that we definitely

wouldn’t have been able to achieve if we

didn’t go

being at the end of the line and hull

means it’s a real struggle to get people

from outside of the city to come and see

our work

and so edinburgh was the perfect

platform for us to share our message

with the world

since then we have booked a 50-date tour

in 39 arts venues across england and

wales

we have fantastic support from

organizations who have helped us

in to help introduce us to new and

exciting venues and audiences

so we can share our work with them as

well and we have set up our first board

of trustees

as we move forward with our company

development and it is filled with

amazing people from all corners of the

country

and all with very different exciting

skills now the most wonderful thing

that’s come out of this entire

experience for all of us

has been our audience responses um

usually at the end of the show we like

to hang back

usually in the bar preferably in the bar

so that our audiences can come and chat

to us if they feel like they’d like to

and we have had people come running up

to us and and hug

us and cry with us and share stories and

thank us

and if they haven’t been able to

identify with one of our stories

personally

they know someone who has maybe gone

through something similar and these

personal connections that we’ve made

with people have just been so magic

there was one audience member who

tweeted us that she uh during a

particularly sad bit of the show

she started to cry and this uh lady next

to her

just reached out and held her hand for a

little bit and

they these were two turtle strangers

just comforting each other

and we were actually able to introduce

them officially over twitter

and they ended up going for a coffee

together which we thought was really

lovely yeah and the online responses to

our show

um have been overwhelmingly positive

people leave us messages all the time

like this

um telling us how they understood

they resonated they saw part of

themselves in us

and occasionally our instagram will get

a picture

sent from somebody in a bikini and it

says

uh i am not ready to share my body with

the world

but i do want to share it with the

roaring girls

we tell our stories in the hope that our

audiences will share theirs

and one sticks out for us it was a woman

called hannah

who came to see the show and wanted to

take a little bit of beachbody ready

with her

and she knew that it was important to

empower and celebrate other women

she was on a night out she was in the

ladies toilets and she saw a woman with

the most beautiful tattoos

and she said to her look i’ve just been

to see this show and it tells me that i

need to celebrate other women and tell

them when they look great

and i love your tattoos and that woman

replied

did you go see beachbody ready paul’s a

village

it is it is it’s not that impressive

it’s

hannah has now come from being an

audience member to

a person who’s on our board of trustees

so we encourage you

to find your people to be more open

and supportive and if someone looks good

you better tell them

because those moments of connection

encouraging

people to be a little bit bolder and a

whole lot kinder

is exactly what our theatre is about

thank you

you