An exploration of grief
Every three months a Southampton theatre holds an ‘Experiment’ night, offering artists the opportunity to perform a piece under development and get critical feedback.
Ahead of the next event tonight — February 25 - we caught up with one of the writers and directors to talk about why the evening is important to them.
Ameena Hamid, 18, wrote the piece ‘The Ones Pushing the Hearse’ as a look into the common evolution of grief from the first losses as a child, of pets and grandparents, to the bigger ones of siblings and friends as we grow older.
The drama piece was a community effort with Ameena asking for friends’ views on the topic of grief and hoping to keep their ‘authentic voices’ as she wrote the hour-long play.
Ameena was inspired to write the play after her brother died as a way to explore how people grieve and deal with the death of a loved one.
She says: ‘I realised that nobody really teaches you how to deal with it, no one shows you. There is no one way that you see in films, of like everyone crying and everything being exactly the same and that is just not how it works.’
This is the first time that something she wrote will be performed in front of a paying audience and asked about this she said: ‘I am kind of excited to see it come to life.’
Even though the play is about grief, it has comedic elements and touches upon the fact ‘none of us actually know what we are doing’.
On the night, only a portion of the piece will be performed, and this adds up to just over 15 minutes. This is so industry professionals can give constructive feedback on all the plays performed at Experiment. A total of four snippets will be performed, each written and performed by a different troupe. The Nuffield Southampton Theatres (NST), who run the Experiment night, say the event offers artists the chance to ‘test new projects; ask questions about a piece or gather feedback from a friendly and constructively critical audience’.
‘The Ones Pushing the Hearse’ stars Alexandra Knott, Sophie Sullivan, Evelyn Blackwell and is directed by Ameena. The performance takes place at NST City on February 25. Tickets cost £5 and are available directly from the theatre.
