She talks to Rebecca Fox about fandom and the stigma of voice surgery.
Doing the same thing over and over is something Sarah-Louise Young is just not designed to do.
"I would be very mischievous and misbehave."
So traditional musical theatre which she trained in just was not for her. Instead she and some colleagues decided to make their own work starting with cabaret.
"We didn’t really know what we were doing. We just hired a venue and said, can we put on a show? And those of us, we’re still here 20 odd years later, still doing it."
While she has also squeezed in some conventional acting on television and in theatre, she keeps returning to solo work - she was touring Australia with her Julie Andrews’ work Julie Madly Deeply when the idea of a show on English singer, songwriter and dancer Kate Bush developed.
"I’m really interested in that relationship with an audience and what’s possible when there’s just one of you and many of them."
A fan of Bush, she always wondered how her fans engaged with her music given she had not performed live for 35 years.
"It’s also born out of this desire to explore fandom and what that is and what that means and the different ways that we, you know, some people want to sit in their bedroom alone with their earpods in and just listen to music. And that’s beautiful. And some people really want to experience music as a communal event. And if you can’t go to a gig, how do you do that?"
Messing about with her collaborator and director Russell Lucas, another Bush fan, they came up with the concept for the show back in 2013. Then Bush announced she was making comeback to live performance.
"We decided we couldn’t make the show. We just thought it’d be so awful if we brought the show out and people thought that we were only doing it to cash in on her return. So heartbroken as theatre makers, but thrilled to bits as fans."
They put the show on ice until 2019 when they decided to reinvigorate it. Then Covid-19 hit.
As soon as they could they hit the road with the show. Then Bush’s hit 1985 song Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was featured on television show Stranger Things and went viral.
"So we’ve been blessed really, because the show was already doing well. But we’ve got this new wave of fans, teenagers, 13-year-olds coming to the show."
Existing fans already had many different ways of celebrating the artist such as Wuthering Heights days.
"It’s joyful, really lovely."
However, she is quick to point out she does not impersonate Bush - a quasi-religious figure to some people - in the show.
"We like to call the show "Essence of Kate". So we take the spirit of her music, her songs.
"And for me, there is only one Kate Bush. And so if you want to hear Kate Bush, you can listen to the albums. What I do is I sing all the songs in the original key and people come out of the show and say, oh my goodness, you sound just like Kate Bush. I don’t think I do. I think I sound like me. But there’s something about those songs that when you hear the beginning of the track, it hotwires you back to the first time that you heard that song."
She then weaves into that stories from the audience and their favourite songs.
"So no two shows for me are ever the same. I just did my 300th performance on Saturday and I can honestly say no show is ever the same to me because it’s unique to the audience who come."
Having the audience participation integral to the show is what keeps her "endlessly fascinated" with performing it.
So to Young it is not really a one-person show.
"It’s really a 200-people show, depending on how many people are in the audience."
Selecting what songs to feature was not easy so to help they did an online poll asking people what they would like to hear.
"So we’ve put in as much as we can, but it was so hard because she has so many songs. We could do a 24-hour ring cycle of her songs and still have songs left over."
Young also had the challenge of learning Bush’s lyrics.
"I’ve done shows about loads of different people and I’ve learned [Stephen] Sondheim songs and I’ve been singing for my whole life. But I think learning her songs was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do because she isn’t a conventional songwriter.
"Lyrically, she plays with patterns, she changes tempos. So I did find them really hard to learn, but now I’ve learned them they’re just in my body. But they are vocal assault courses, definitely."
Not being able to speak Russian, learning a song in the language was extremely difficult and took months to master.
"But I think when you stretch into those places as an artist that are unusual, that’s a thrilling place to be."
It is also the most demanding show Young has performed.
"I’m asking myself to be very, very, physical and very, vocally agile. But I also think that inevitably happens when you make a lots of shows - this is my 17th show. I’m 50 this year, so I’ve been making theatre since I was 21. And I think inevitably you lean into more challenging places. I want to tell important stories.
"I want to do work that’s nourishing to me as well as to an audience. And so I think you gravitate towards things that are more complicated and challenging because you want to grow."
"My four older brothers would tell you that I’ve been singing since I was born, and it was incredibly annoying for them."
She credits her mother for taking the family to the theatre when they were children but it did not occur to Young back then to make it a profession. Instead she went off to university to study foreign languages and then took a drama course alongside.
Living in Bristol with its vibrant arts scene, it was not long before she was directing and doing costumes, choreography, performing and writing.
"I sort of ended up making a solo show when I was 21, which I took to the Edinburgh Fringe and then took to London. And I kind of thought, oh, this seems to be what I’m doing now."
Not having any training, she decided to study musical theatre, but discovered it was not her thing.
"Ironically, I have ended up doing musicals as well - you know any opportunity to get on stage and perform. I think the discovery that making my own work was really where my heart’s desire was. That’s kept me in the industry."
Young spent 10 years with improvised musical group Showstoppers before her solo work took off. She began her investigation into fandom with the Julie Andrews’ show, moved into tragic-comedy with Je Regrette! playing a dark clown-type, Edith Piaf nemesis and then comedy with the award-winning Cabaret Whore.
Young is also very proud of her show The Silent Treatment based on her personal experience of being told it would be career suicide to talk about the voice surgery she had. She had been losing her voice on and off since she was at drama school but it was not until many years later after seeking specialist help that she discovered she had cysts on her vocal folds believed to have been caused by screaming when sexually assaulted as a child.
"That sent me on this amazing quest to get to know my body. I went into psychotherapy, but I also started looking at physical and embodied practice."
It was not until four years later that she decided to have surgery.
"Then ironically I was doing a show about Julie Andrews, who of course famously lost her voice through malpractice of a voice operation."
After surgery her voice became effortless and she wanted to tell the world but was advised against it by her management.
"So I waited a good eight years. I wanted to make sure that I was in a safe place before I made a piece of theatre about that. And it’s a funny piece as well. It’s full of humour and silliness. And my cysts are played by these two giant pink boxing gloves who do a song called a cyst dance."
While her solo shows dominate, she still tries to do one ensemble piece a year to work with other people and "refuel".
At the heart of all her work is a love of people and bringing joy to an audience.
"I think you have to love people to do this job. The show is, I’ve been told, both funny and touching. And I think what often gets said, because I always meet the audience afterwards, people will come up and say, you know, I laughed and I cried in equal measure."
Young calls it being a "creative facilitator".
She is still pinching herself at the show’s success but admits a life in the arts has not been easy.
"I’ve done everything a bit later. You know, I got married last year. I’ve only just bought a house. A lot of my friends have been much more established and financially secure for years. So I had to kind of live like a travelling minstrel for a very long time. And take nothing for granted because this could disappear tomorrow."
Bush has never seen the show as far as Young knows but she hopes Bush would love it if she did.
"It’s fun, and it’s playful, and it’s respectful. She would have to come in full disguise. I think the audiences would lose their minds. But we have had friends of hers come and see it. One of the original backing singers from her 1979 Tour of Life came. Some cousins have come, some friends of her son. We’re hopeful that a positive message may have reached her of the show’s existence."
Although not everyone has been positive about the idea of the show, seeing her as a parasite for doing it, her response is to look at the artist.
"This is a woman who has impersonated a donkey in a haunted house. She laughs at herself as well. So to make something that was just po-faced and serious would be to be denying half of the material that this woman created. She’s an actress, she’s a comedian. She made videos with 1980s comedians."
Young is confident in having made the show from an "authentic place of love".
"There is nothing in it that is offensive. There are some tongue-in-cheek moments, which I think are no more tongue-in-cheek than things she’s done herself."
At present she is in what she calls her "composting" period for a new show, absorbing as much information as she can and letting her brain mull it over as well as directing a show back home.
"I’m never off, the show takes the time and I love my work. But as I get older, I’m also mindful of making space for non-work life. I’m away from my husband and my stepchildren and the cats for four months. And that’s a long time. So I am trying to build in a little bit of time off."
TO SEE
"An Evening Without Kate Bush"
• Wānaka Festival of Colour, Pacific Crystal Palace, April 1, 8.30pm
• Dunedin Arts Festival, Mayfair Theatre, Dunedin April 3-4, 7pm
• Oamaru Opera House April 5, 7.30pm
