My name is Christian Markham, and I am the Graeae associate on attachment here at the Mercury Theatre. My job is to help form networks and attachments between deaf, disabled, and neurodivergent artists across the East of England. Below, I interviewed neurodivergent playwright Emma Jo Pallett about her newest play, Flumps.
‘I don’t know if I’ve answered any of the questions that you’ve asked me’.
I chuckle, looking down at my notes. Not only has Emma answered all of my questions so far but she has actually answered my next two or three. Our conversation continues like this, jumping backwards and forwards, and flowing in a non-linear manner that feels all too familiar.
Emma goes by Emma Jo professionally. I like that. It’s classically writerly; a linguistic suit and tie. Maybe I should go by Christian-Isaiah? I ponder this as I sit in front of Emma, clad in wonderfully vibrant colours, and wispy eyeliner that has the air of a trademark. My mind wanders to these places not from a sense of disinterest in the person in front of me but from the ease they radiate.
Within many minority communities, there exists the concept of ‘the radar’. It’s an intuition. A sense of finding one’s own, letting you know you’re in a ‘safe’ presence. My own personal radar has registered a blip. Emma Jo Pallett. About one metre in front of me. Neurodivergent. Which, of course, is why we are meeting today.
For Emma, ADHD ‘is the label that feels the most clear to [describe herself]’. I, myself, am autistic, diagnosed at 10 years old. For Emma, however, this is an aspect of herself that she has only come to realise later in life. ‘I think a lot of women do discover this later’, she recounts. An unfortunate truth backed up statistically. But now she does have that label, she can put words to things that influenced her since a young age.
Neurodiversity has a way of making one feel decoupled from space and time. Days breeze by in a haze of thoughts and intentions that never seem to quite cohere into a synergistic whole. Emma relates similar experiences.
‘Honestly, the amount of times I make tea, forget about it for like two hours, see the tea, put it in the microwave, put it on heat and walk away, get distracted by something else, and then the next morning I wake up, go the kitchen and I am like it’s that tea from two days ago!’
Although ASD and ADHD are two separate diagnoses, this lack of permanence feels very relatable; flights of fancy followed by periods of intense hyper-focus. My personal M.O.
Emma and I talk about a lot of things during our brief hour together, from life experiences to fairy-tales. Inevitably, however, we have to wrestle some sort of structure out of this whole affair and so our conversation turns to her newest play, Flumps, premiering at the Mercury Theatre on the 6th June.
Set primarily in a caravan, Flumps jumps backwards and forwards in the lives of two young siblings, Felicity and Harvey, who, much like Emma and I, are both ADHD and Autistic respectively.
Right, eye spy: your turn and no stupid ones.
Like adrenocorticosteroids?
Exactly. Nothing like that.
‘I think [Felicity and Harvey are] definitely neurodiverse’, Emma tells me enthusiastically. ‘I didn’t want to completely put it into the actor to embody that, but I think Felicity is kinda unavoidably so. Through the dialogue, the energy she creates is just… you can’t miss it, and I do think there is an element of autism in Harvey’s character’.
True to Emma’s words, the script presents Felicity as a whirlwind of hyperactivity, always chasing the high of the titular Flumps and running off on endless soliloquies. Her energy is immediately likeable in its unsullied juvenility. Harvey, however, conveys an altogether more subdued and ‘adult’ energy.
‘Harvey is a very complex character’, Emma starts. ‘They are not allowed to fully find themselves because they are looking after someone else all the time’. In the play, Harvey acts as Felicity’s de-facto guardian, in the absence of their perpetually off-stage yet mentally ever-present mother.
Harvey loves ‘biology, plants and nature’ and is ‘very good at certain things and they are very perceptive and they can really see things that other people don’t see’. Growing up, my family were perpetually amused about the things I seemed to notice that other kids didn’t. My Dad often retells the story of the curious time I stared down a road in London, curious why certain cars seemed to avoid it like the plague, blissfully unaware of concepts like crime. Unlike Harvey and Felicity who hatch an unconventional plan to survive to keep their marshmallow jar full…
Due to the former’s need to care for their sibling, ‘they are gonna be someone who is missed and maybe discovers their neurodiversity later in life,’ just as Emma did with her ADHD. Reportedly, there are ‘between 150,000 and 500,000 people aged 20 to 49 in England who are autistic but are undiagnosed’. One wonders how many of them might find themselves in Flump’s audience.
Harvey and Felicity ‘mask themselves a lot throughout the show’. Masking is the process of disguising or concealing one’s neurodivergent traits in order to fit into neurotypical society. The mask has always been a symbol of theatre (the muses of tragedy and comedy come to mind) making it perhaps the ideal format to showcase the neurodivergent experience. Through this lens, Harvey and Felicity become a performance within a performance, an opportunity I am sure that actors Robyn Holdaway and Jadie Rose Hobson are taking to with great abandon.
As long as you’re ok, that’s all that matters.
Really?
We can replace everything in the world except ourselves.
It’s important to mention that Harvey and Felicity’s neurodivergence ‘doesn’t hinder them. It is something in the play that actually aids them’. Although Emma is quick to acknowledge that is maybe not the takeaway most will have. ‘People see it as something that hinders you, but actually there are a lot of things that can help and enhance’.
This is a sentiment I can easily agree with. Especially as it pertains to artistry. As Emma states, ‘some of the ways you think can be super helpful in the arts, you know, because that’s the whole point of being creative’. I genuinely don’t know what my creative work would look like if it weren’t for my neurodivergence. It isn’t just a part of me, it is me. Although, that fluidity that makes us so great at the creative aspect ironically makes us ill-suited for the current reality. ‘Funding has been cut and funding is so tough’. Recently policy changes threaten the disabled communities, as Universal Credit is being cut unfairly, Access to Work claims face 10-month delays and misinformation is rampant.
Flumps is an intersectional play, decidedly neurodivergent and working-class, drawing upon the background of its writer. Many think of art as a completely straightforward process, but often the work from page to stage is not just complex but costly. Flumps itself started as a small-scale monologue jam starring Emma as Felicity. Six months to a year later, touring regional fringes, the cast expanded to two in a ‘little show that toured around a couple of Fringe festivals’.
Emma very vividly remembers taking the show to ‘the smallest grottiest venue, with chocolate on the floor dug into the carpet’ . If only they had been Flumps. Afterwards, Emma went back to the drawing board and redeveloped the show for the Mercury after participating in their writers’ program and acquiring funding.
‘I think people just think a play appears at the end, but they don’t realise what’s gone into that’. A lot of work that is unfortunately likely to not be very bountiful. ‘I find that hard. The expectations on artists to do so much work that is unpaid’.
And the process to even apply for funding is very stressful in its own right. ‘There are so many neurodivergent people in our industry and the way that you have to get money is via a form, which gives most people, you know, a bit of a heart attack’.
Unravelling the bureaucracy that leads to creativity is a key part of what I hope to do with my position. I agree with Emma that it doesn’t really make sense. ‘It is so uncreative and yet what I am trying to get money for is to be creative so the whole process just feels kind of inverted. Unless you’ve got the support of someone which luckily I have been able to come by in the Mercury, but unless you have you know you don’t feel like you stand a chance’.
Graeae and the Mercury in tow, follows the social model of disability. The lack of access faced by disabled people is due to imposed arbitrary societal-barriers rather than anything innate about ourselves. The same sort of societal-barriers that affect me, Emma, Felicity, and Harvey.
But that’s why it is important we keep telling these stories.
Representation is important not just for representations sake, although that is a worthy cause in and of itself, but for the pure diversity of stories that remain still yet untold.
‘It’s the creative future isn’t it? There’s stories that haven’t been told and they happen to be the ones that are underrepresented because those voices don’t get to come through the same and that’s why they are kind of late to the party as such because they haven’t had the opportunities that other voices have had’.
Flumps runs from Fri 6 – Sat 14 Jun at the Mercury Theatre Studio.
You can find out more and book tickets here: mercurytheatre.co.uk/event/flumps.
