Jenna Fincken is raising awareness of coercive control.
The co-executive director of Wildcard Theatre on her hit solo show Ruckus, which is currently running at Southwark Playhouse.
Hello, and welcome to another issue of The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
This issue features an interview with the amazing Jenna Fincken, whose one-woman play Ruckus is currently running at Southwark Playhouse. It was one of the best shows I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, so go along and see it if you get the chance!
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That’s all for now. Another quick word from me at the bottom, but first: Jenna Fincken!
Ruckus, which arrives at Southwark Playhouse this week, was one of the standout solo shows at this summer’s Edinburgh Fringe.
Written and performed by Jenna Fincken and produced by Wildcard Theatre, it is a thrilling yet thoughtful depiction of a relationship that spirals from psychological abuse to physical abuse to – although the show ends before the audience witnesses it – murder.
That might sound like a spoiler, but it isn’t. Ruckus telegraphs its ending from the off. It makes you aware what 20-something teacher Lou will suffer at the hands of her initially charming boyfriend Ryan. That is, in fact, the point of the piece: you know what will happen at the end, so you look out for warning signs along the way, you pay attention to the myriad red flags in Ryan’s behaviour.
“We are not taught about relationships at school,” Fincken says. “We are not taught about what is acceptable behaviour and what isn’t. All domestic murders and domestic abuse start with coercive control. I wanted to show audiences what the first six months of a relationship like that looks like.”
Every instance of psychological abuse that occurs in Ruckus actually happened – either to Fincken herself, to a friend of hers, or in one of the many stories she came across in her extensive research to ensure she realistically depicted coercive control in a relationship. There is one particularly frightening scene in which Ryan switches off the engine of a speeding car at night. “That really happened to a woman in America,” Fincken says. “It still gives me shivers when I think about it.”
That truth is one of many reasons Ruckus is a particularly powerful piece. Others include Fincken’s terrific, tightly wound performance as Lou, Georgia Green’s taut direction, Simeon Miller’s intense lighting and Tingying Dong’s disconcerting sound. What makes it interesting from a dramaturgical perspective, though, is the structure of the show: it starts with Lou meeting Ryan, tracks the development of their relationship, then stops at the first instance of physical abuse. A big clock in Jida Akil’s design counts down the days until Lou’s murder: at the end, there is still 400 or so to go.
“I didn’t want to traumatise the audience,” says Fincken. “I’ve been to a lot of theatre like that. I went to one show that had such a gruesome scene in it that I fainted. Is that good? I think that audiences switch off if something becomes too traumatic, and I didn’t want that to happen.”
“If you actually depict the violence, that gives audience members a way out, too,” she continues. “They can think: ‘Oh, I have never been punched, that hasn’t happened to me, so it is all fine.’ That is what I didn’t want to happen. I want them to empathise. I want the audience to pay attention.”
“Every instance of domestic abuse starts with coercive control. I wanted to show audiences what the first six months of that looks like…”
Fincken, 29, grew up in the small village of Aston Rowant in rural Oxfordshire. Severe dyslexia and a speech impediment meant school was a challenge – “I didn’t speak until I was four, and I couldn’t read properly or write properly, either,” Fincken says – but she discovered a passion for performing at drama classes, which in turn gave her the confidence to pursue acting instead of academia.
Attending Oxford School of Drama – the one-year foundation course at 18, then the three-year acting degree – was both a help and a hindrance. On one hand, Fincken found her training there a confidence-crushing experience. On the other, it was there that she met the eight other founding members of Wildcard Theatre, the company from which much of her subsequent work stemmed.
Fincken graduated in 2015, moved to London, and spent the following four years working with Wildcard – the company had a breakout hit with James Meteyard and Maimuna Memon’s gig-theatre show Electrolyte in 2018, then opened London studios in 2019 – and doing the odd acting job, including appearing in the 2017 national tour of Duncan Macmillan’s People, Places and Things.
Often, though, Fincken felt like she was aiding others to fulfil their dreams, rather than pursuing her own. “It seemed like I was always on the side-lines, watching, observing, helping out,” she says. “After drama school, I just didn’t have the confidence to do my own thing, to create my own work.”
Bizarrely, it was her day-job working in customer service for a mattress company that helped Fincken regain her confidence. “I was really good at it,” she laughs. “I had customers screaming at me down the phone all day. Eventually I started doing different voices, being different characters over the phone to them. It helped me start writing, too. I wrote like 300 different standard emails for them.”
In 2019, Fincken took a month off her job at the mattress company to work on her career. At the end of it, she had the first draft of Ruckus. She eventually pitched it to the rest of Wildcard, and they agreed that the company should produce it at the 2020 Edinburgh Fringe. Covid-19 pushed that back to 2021, then 2022, by which time Fincken had taken over as co-executive director of Wildcard.
Today, Fincken has left the customer service job far behind – “I’m sorry, Eve, the mattress company,” she laughs – and spends most of her time running Wildcard, whether that is preparing for the Southwark Playhouse transfer of Ruckus, lining up the company’s next show, or attending to Wildcard’s ever-expanding artist development programmes.
“Wildcard is a big, collaborative project, really,” says Fincken. “Over the last few years, we’ve developed both the creative and producing skills to take an idea and turn it into a show, and now we want to share them with as many other emerging artists as possible. It’s funny, really. I meet people all the time who don’t think they can write, or don’t think they can make a show. I say to them: ‘No, no, no. That was me three years ago, too. Trust me. You can do it.’”
What do you want to do?
Personally, I’ve been working on Ruckus for so long that it is weird to think about what comes next. I have ideas for other plays and for turning Ruckus into a TV show, but what I really want to do is find an efficient way to work creatively alongside my work with Wildcard.
Then, when it comes to Wildcard, we really want to get secure, long-term funding so we can plan for the future. We have applied for NPO funding and are waiting to hear back. It would mean so much to us. We really admire companies like Middle Child and Paines Plough. That’s where we want to be.
What support do you need to get there?
Well, people can come and see Ruckus at Southwark Playhouse. It’s on until October 29. Wildcard is a charity, too, so people can donate if they want to. We are always looking for other artists, other companies, and other organisations to connect with, as well. But, like I said, the main thing is getting a big chunk of funding. We have the ideas and the passion: we just need the support.
How can people find out more about you?
They can find us on social media, they can visit our website, and they can come see the show and chat to us. Even if you saw it in Edinburgh already, come along, because it is in a bigger space now and it has a whole new set design.
That’s it for this week. I’m off to the Dublin as soon as I press send on this. Next week’s issue is going to be the first ever international edition of The Crush Bar, featuring a chat with the incredible Irish theatremaker Dan Colley, whose show A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings was another hit at the Edinburgh Fringe, and whose new show Lost Lear is part of the Dublin Theatre 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 next time!
Fergus