Performance artist Bryony Kimmings doesn’t hold back. If something is troubling her then it invariably finds its way out in the open and into her work. Her early theatre shows, including Sex Idiot and 7 Day Drunk, took audiences on a freewheeling tour through the perils of early adulthood. Love, desire and STIs. Anxiety, alcohol and the drive to create good work. They were whirlwind one-woman shows, brimming with creativity, rammed with zany props and mad detours, and – despite all the doubts and fears contained within them – glowing with a childlike sort of optimism.
Later shows would see Kimmings pull other people and their concerns on to the stage. In Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model, Kimmings and her nine-year-old niece created and performed a powerful critique of the hyper-sexualisation of tween culture. She and her then partner Tim Grayburn explored the devastating impact of depression in Fake It ’Til You Make It. As her profile grew, there followed an ambitious musical about cancer at the National Theatre (A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer) and I’m a Phoenix, Bitch, a ragingly powerful solo show about postnatal depression and the breakdown of Kimmings’s relationship and mental health.
