Vicky Moran wants to combine her community work and creative ambition.
The co-founder of theatre company In Her Strength on her journey so far, her plans for 2023, and new show In The Net at Jermyn Street Theatre.
Hello, and welcome to the first 2023 issue of The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
This issue features Vicky Moran, co-founder of company In Her Strength, and director of Misha Levkov’s In The Net, which opens at Jermyn Street Theatre next week. I spoke to Vicky before Christmas, and loved chatting to her about her work with Cardboard Citizens and Clean Break, and her ambition to combine community and professional theatre work under one banner.
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That’s all for now. More from me at the bottom, but first: Vicky Moran!
Director and facilitator Vicky Moran feels like she has spent her theatrical career so far struggling to reconcile her passion for community work with her professional creative ambition – and that feeling frustrates her.
“I feel like I am always trying to bridge the gap between the two, and that is frustrating because they are the bloody same thing,” Moran says. “Youth theatre is theatre. A show put on in a prison is a show. Unfortunately, though, society views community and charity work as being less important than mainstage work for some reason. It is a battle I’ve been fighting for a lot of my career.”
Moran’s solution was to start her own company - a company that sits squarely in the middle of her particular Venn diagram of passions. In Her Strength was founded in 2020 by Moran and producer Claire Gilbert with the express ambition of employing women with experience of homelessness to create theatre. It is early days, but Moran and Gilbert have already run several workshops, produced twelve digital monologues, published a zine, and staged a scratch performance in Leicester last Spring. During 2023, they will be working towards a fuller theatrical production.
“We are trying to create a model of theatre that is professional, but that has real stories and real community work at its heart,” Moran explains. “We pay women to write. We employ actors with experience of homelessness. It is community-based, but it is professional, too. That combination is what I am pushing for in everything I do.”
Alongside co-running In Her Strength, Moran also runs and assists various youth and community programmes for theatres and theatre organisations around London, including The Young Vic and Arts Depot, as well as writing and staging her own work – No Sweat, a drama about LGBTQ+ homelessness, ran at the Pleasance Theatre in February 2020 – and directing other projects. Currently, she is in rehearsals for Misha Levkov’s new play In The Net at the Jermyn Street Theatre.
“In The Net is about a disjointed family, living in Kentish Town in 2025, when climate change has had a terrible impact on society,” Moran explains. “The mother of the family has just died, and the family members are all grieving in their own way. The daughter, Laura, wants to build an eruv, which is a traditional Jewish net thing that unites households. Only she wants to build it from their garden, all over London, and eventually all over the world. She wants it to include everyone.”
“The play starts out quite literally, but it ends up as something far more like magical realism,” Moran says. “I don’t want to give too much away, but our designer Ingrid Hu has made this incredible spectacle of a net that is built before the audience’s eyes. It’s almost a sculpture or an installation.”
“I’ve always enjoyed working with young people. I’ve always done charity work. I’ve always cared about the world we live in…”
Born in 1994, Moran grew up in Windsor. She fell in love with theatre when she was young, and would travel into London to see shows whenever she could. At first, she was more interested in being an actor than anything else, but it was while studying for a degree in drama at the University of Essex that she realised her passion actually lay elsewhere.
“It sounds stupid, but I realised that theatre wasn’t just about West End musicals,” she remembers. “I realised it was about a lot more. I’m Jewish and I was part of a Jewish youth movement growing up. I’ve always enjoyed working with young people. I’ve always done charity work. I’ve always cared about the world we live in. At uni, I realised I could combine that with my love of theatre.”
“I also felt like there wasn’t a place for me in the world of the arts,” Moran continues. “Professional theatre felt very wanky. It felt like everybody had been to Oxbridge. I really found my home within community theatre groups, though. They weren’t so serious. They were fun and playful. There were always a lot of laughs. I’ve tried to take that attitude with me throughout my career.”
Moran went on to study an MA in Applied Theatre at the Central School of Speech and Drama, through which she worked with the theatre companies Chickenshed (which works predominantly with young people) Clean Break (which works with women in the justice system) and Cardboard Citizens (which works with those that have experienced homelessness and poverty). She graduated in 2017, worked with Cardboard Citizens as an assistant director for a year, then set out as a freelance director and facilitator. “I have to do other stuff to pay the rent, too,” she adds.
Since then, Moran’s career has been a balancing act of community projects, youth theatre groups, and other productions. She has worked with Cardboard Citizens again, assisting on Ali Taylor’s play Cathy and Femi Keeling’s play Rising, both of which toured theatres, hostels, prisons and other spaces around the UK in 2018 and 2019. She staged devised musical Arlington House with the company in 2019, too, and devised play Mumma Shaw with Clean Break in 2022. She also staged productions Nell Hardy’s one-woman play NoMad in 2020, and Debunk Theatre’s Kohjaly in 2022.
Her aim is to keep collaborating with companies like Cardboard Citizens and Clean Break, keep building her own company In Her Strength, keep finding ways to combine her twin loves of community and professional theatre, and keep making work that sits in the centre of her Venn diagram of passions. “There are so many real stories out there that deserve to be seen on our biggest stages,” Moran says. “I guess I have reached a point where I feel I can be the person to make that happen.”
What do you want to do?
Things are so difficult and insecure for everyone in the arts right now. If I am able to keep creating work that makes a difference and brings people joy and laughter, and keeps people coming back to the theatre, then that is enough for me. As long as I’m playing, I’ll be happy.
What support do you need to get there?
Well, I’m trying to step up my career at this point. I’d like the time and space to push my artistic practice forward. Any support on that front would be very welcome.
How can people find out more about you?
In The Net opens at the Jermyn Street Theatre on January 12. People can come and see that.
After that, I’ll be travelling around the UK seeing various performances as part of NT Connections. I’ve got a couple of other pieces of new writing in the works, too, including stuff with In Her Strength, and various other bits and bobs of R&D.
People can check out my website, too, or find me on social media, or just drop me an email.
That’s it for now. Next week’s issue will be an international one, featuring Italian-German performer Andrea Salustri, whose show Materia was a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, and returns to the UK this month as part of London International Mime Festival.
One final reminder about the various ways you can support this newsletter: you can share it with anyone you think might be interested, you can become a paid subscriber using the button at the top, or you can get in touch with me about using it for promotional purposes.
That’s all. Thanks for reading. If you want to get in touch for any reason, just reply to this email or contact me via Twitter - I’m @FergusMorgan. See you in a week!
Fergus