Katie Arnstein greets you at her theatre shows by merrily handing out sweets. “I want to say thank you, take the fear away for myself, and immediately start a conversation with the audience,” she explains. After all, there are so many other ways they could be spending the next hour of their lives. “It costs money, time and, during Covid, came with the risk of a journey and an enclosed space. It’s a generous thing for people to be with me. And if they don’t like it, they’ve had a rhubarb and custard.”
The shows are carefully confected by Arnstein, who has emerged as one of our most captivating storytellers, with her soft-centred yet never sentimental explorations of hard subjects. Her first three productions formed the It’s a Girl! trilogy about sexism and sexuality. Her latest piece, The Long Run, is a bracing account of her mother Jane’s treatment for bowel cancer. Putting audiences at ease is essential: “I’ve never changed my mind because someone’s yelled at me. But I have if someone’s spoken gently to me.”
