Phoebe Ladenburg, an award-winning actor, director, and theatre maker, is set to bring Surrender to Arcola Theatre ahead of an Edinburgh Fringe Festival run.
Surrender by Sophie Swithinbank in creative partnership with Phoebe Ladenburg will be on at the Arcola Theatre between 19 June and 13 July.
Nancy Medina will associate direct Phoebe Ladenburg in the one woman play, with the production arriving at Summerhall in Edinburgh on 1 to 26 August.
You’re starring in Surrender at Arcola Theatre ahead of an Edinburgh Fringe run; what can you tell us about the show?
The show is short and sharp. Also (hopefully) entertaining and thought-provoking. It’s the story of a woman who is meeting her daughter for the first time in over 10 years. She would urgently like her daughter to hear her version of events, which she knows will be different to the version her daughter has been told by others.
But there’s a problem – she can’t quite remember what happened, which bits she made up and which bits others made up. We watch as she tries to sift through her sleep-deprived memories to come up with a version that will repair their relationship. Luckily, she’s quite funny, so we get a few laughs along the way!
Surrender explores themes of motherhood and social care. What inspired you and Sophie Swithinbank to tackle these subjects?
A year after my child was born, I was auditioning some prospective students at the drama school I work at. One candidate presented Kate’s final monologue from Taming of the Shrew – the one where she asks the women in the audience to stop fighting the patriarchy and submit.
For the first time, I felt a huge connection to this piece in relation to my experience of motherhood. I commissioned Sophie to write something based on this and she wrote a beautiful poem in iambic pentameter. Then, over the years, my experiences working with prison leavers and those in the social care system, started influencing and shaping the story of Mother and, eventually, Surrender emerged.
How did your collaboration with Nancy Medina as Associate Director influence the production?
I am so excited to be working with Nancy! She is arriving on Friday for our first rehearsal together, so ask me after that!
Can you share any challenges you faced while preparing for this one-woman show?
I mean…. self-doubt? Fear of failure? General terror? I could go on. But no, the main challenge I’ve had is finding spontaneity in the moment – in the absence of another actor, you have to imagine reactions to what you are saying so that you can react back.
Otherwise it becomes a bit like a Ted Talk. Solo shows are increasingly common, I think – people can develop them with little to no budget before presenting them to a producer, so they are an effective format for new work. There will probably be lots of people reading this who are in or have been in the same boat!
What do you hope audiences will take away from Surrender?
I hope people will take away a whole load of contradictions from the show. We want to show that there are always different ways of understanding someone’s story – to move away from the chronic ‘goodies vs baddies’ culture that is pervasive at the moment.
I hope that mothers will feel seen and understood. I hope that those who aren’t mothers will feel closer to the lived experience of what it means to raise a child under certain conditions in this country. In all my work, I try to connect to the undercurrent of the human experience, and I hope people will feel that.
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see Surrender?
Push the button.
