Sh1t Theatre talk about loss, hope and new show, Or What’s Left Of Us

“You know, with everything in the world at the moment, everybody's feeling a little bit of grief for what they hoped for with the political situation.” Becca Biscuit is telling me about the new production from Sh1t Theatre, the acclaimed company she formed with Louise Mothersole. Beloved by critics and well-informed Fringe audiences, they’ve created a body of work which is as mischievous as it is thought-provoking. Now they’ve brought their brand of innovation to something extremely traditional.  

“It’s something we talk about in the show,” adds Mothersole. “Folk always seems to have a revival when there's upheaval. It feels apt and sort of the right time for it to be popping up again.”

The show in question is Or What’s Left Of Us, which comes to Hove’s The Old Market on Weds 2 - Thurs 3 April, a typically ambitious work covering grief, tradition and… true crime. It was initially motivated by a recent bereavement. The pair genuinely didn’t know if they’d ever go back onstage, having lost an integral part of their practice.  

“We basically stopped work because of the grief,” says Buscuit. “Folk music was a way of just being in a room together. We were like: ‘Let's play some old songs’, as a way of being creative in a way with no pressure.” She tells me singing together quickly evolved into going to folk clubs, sing-arounds and festivals. Handed down through generations, the form offers a fascinating glimpse of shared values, historical context and cultural identity.  It makes me wonder if there was some solace to be found in the lived experiences of ordinary people.

“We were going into a room with people singing songs which were hundreds and hundreds of years old, but the emotions were the same,” says Mothersole. “They weren't perfect at it, but it was about the feeling and the sharing. Everyone joining in. It turned out to be exactly what we needed. You fell in love with it and sort of discover hope again.”

Biscuit says the folk nights were almost the opposite of a performance. There isn’t someone standing at the front demanding an audience’s attention. “Someone sort of brings a song, and then everybody joins in as best they can,” she says. “So, it's much different to us doing a theatre show and people just staring silently. Everybody is part of it. That was really joyful.” There was one folk club in Leeds which would provide a springboard for Sh1T Theatre’s new work. Not due to the bucolic nature of the songs sang or the sense of community to be found, but because somebody firebombed it a week later.

“We got into show making mode,” says Mothersole. “This was an expression of our grief - that thin line between something beautiful and something horrific. Which is like nature and folk music. And then there's even a real crime that's just followed us.”

In narrative terms, Or What’s Left Of Us follows the pair becoming entranced by folk, before pondering on the inexplicable motives of that arsonist. “There’s also folk songs, which always come back to talking about death,” says Biscuit. If you’ve had even a brief encounter with the pair’s previous offerings, it’ll be no surprise that the work is far more thoughtful and subversive than they make out.

Let’s look at Dollywould, the last showstopping time they came to Brighton Fringe. Ambitious and audacious in equal measure, it floated somewhere between a surreal travelogue and an expression of affection for Ms Dolly Parton. Based around a road trip to Dolly Wood, the Queen of Country’s theme park, it pulled together not-so disparate conversations around individuality and immortality.  

“It was also about Dolly the sheep,” says Biscuit. “Who was the first ever clone. She was named after Parton, because she was cloned from a memory gland. Ha... Ha...”  

“Then you have Dollywood,” adds in Mothersole. “Which is a ‘sort of ‘Ye Olde America’ that’ll exist forever. Plastic fantastic! But just 10 minutes down the road is a place where the rotting of human remains is studied.” She’s talking about is the Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, which the pair attempted to break into as part of their own studies.

Willing to commit a spot trespass, in a place where local law enforcement aren’t commonly celebrated for their whimsical sense of humour, demonstrates the level of background research the pair pump into their work. The world of folk music is huge, and quite badly recorded; often depending upon oral tradition and contemporary interpretation. But, then there’s overwhelming cast of the hopeless, feckless and fearless to draw from. This is a genre which mines beauty from resilience.

“You know, there are happy folk songs,” says Biscuit. “But when you have these people expressing how they've been through the same thing as you, who might have been dead 500 years ago, you realise you're not completely alone. There's a sense of community which goes back 1000s of years.” Mothersole points out how the show also draws from folk horror, aesthetically offering a nod to cinema works like Hereditary, Midsomer and The Wicker Man. “All these modern films are actually about grief,” she suggests.

They met while at university, eventually ending up on a theatre course together. “It was quite boring,” Mothersole admits. “But you had to do a public performance every single week, and do the front of house, the tech and stage manage it yourself. And run the bar. Every element of it. That made making performance suddenly seem possible.” A natural progression seemed to be combining their work, and that’s basically the origin story of Sh1T Theatre. “We feel very, very grateful for that,” she adds. “Before then, when we got to uni, the love of conventional theatre was sort of knocked out of us. When you hear about the sort of patriarchal nature of it and the capitalism etc… but there was nothing to fill that hole for us. Or none of this seemed doable.”

Like most makers of wildly compelling and unafraid drama, their work neatly fitted in with the offerings at Edinburgh Fringe. “We owe a lot to it,” says Biscuit. “We did 13 years in a row. But, last year with this show, was the first time we'd been back in half a decade. Originally, we were on the dole, and you could transfer your benefits to anywhere where you were ‘on holiday’ within the UK. And it was all slightly more affordable then.” While their shows are hot tickets at the arts festival now, it wasn’t always the case. There was a long period of 11am performances, dingy basements and endless promotional work. “We used to stand in the pouring rain, in a wintery August, wearing hotpants and trying to give away bits of paper…”

While there’s a slightly surreal narrative, the thematic heart of Or What’s Left Of Us shakes hands with solace while offering a sense of solidarity. And hopefully leaves some songs stuck in the audience’s head. “People come out at the end feeling more joyful than sad,” says Biscuit. “It's not a show specifically for people who’ve known grief, you don't need to have been through anything like this to come.” She tells me most performances finish with a sing around in the venue’s bar. “We get the audience to come and join us. It's not a folk sing around though. Last night we had Four Non-Blondes. And we had a little bit of Britney Spears…That was good.”

Sh!t Theatre present Or What’s Left Of Us at Hove’s The Old Market on Weds 2 – Thurs  3 April 2025

www.theoldmarket.com

Main image by Ellie Kurttz

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