the precipice

I don't know how to explain it. The more I try, the more it escapes me.

I didn't want to kill myself, you know? I didn’t want to actually endure pain and suffering. But I was just so excruciatingly aware of how insignificant I really was. It's like i could sense every tiny atom in my body. and every tiny atom was not right, shouldn't be There. me and my cluster of atoms didn't mean anything. Nothing at all.

I wanted to stop taking up valuable space. I wanted my tiny insignificant cluster of atoms to expand and expand and expand until I just wasn’t there anymore.

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In the depths of her depression, Hannah has withdrawn from  society and escaped  to a  spacecraft  on  the moon. Quiet, alone  and  away  from  Earth,  Hannah  is free of the overwhelming feelings  she  experienced  on  a  daily  basis.  The feelings she can't quite describe, but were so strong they drove her to the top of a mountain where she considered suicide. Hannah’s life in space is small and safe. She sets the rules. If she gets lonely, she can always watch earth from a distance tuning in via an old broken radio. Then one day her friend arrives and asks her to come back to Earth. 

The Precipice is a visceral, physical theatre piece unpicking shame, something Dr Brene Brown describes as ‘a silent epidemic’, and it’s link to suicide and depression. It seeks to discover how to live with these powerful, negative & all-consuming emotions that make us feel like we’ve got no way out. 

Currently in development with support from Shoreditch Town Hall and Oxford Playhouse.