June—July 2025

After a fire takes the life of music superstar Gemini Knight, those left behind try and grapple with what it means to mourn; an artist, a person, and the money they made. Disco Inferno explores grief through fandom, family and friendship, with movement, song and humour.

I accepted a compensated DSM position with National Youth Theatre on their Playing Up season, which is a performance of a newly written play at the end of the alternative education Level 3 acting qualification programme.

The team was all women and nonbinary people, and was a very diverse group of people, with the majority of us being queer and a number of the others being POC. The atmosphere was enjoyable, with everybody being communicative, calm, and understanding. The others in the team were more creatively-minded so I was relied upon for organisation – creating a meticulously-annotated book with blocking for each movement, handling rehearsal calls and rehearsal notes, and ensuring synergy between the different file organisation systems different members of the team were using.

In addition, the absences and late arrivals within the company created challenges for the director and CSM, which I endeavoured to support them through, noting down absences, character substitutions, and who stood in for absent actors in scenes. In addition to this, I uploaded and organised all rehearsal videos into a collective drive for the company, which was especially necessary on this production due to our short rehearsal period meaning that we couldn’t return to scenes that people had missed due to unorganised absences.