Responding to the way institutions fail to provide appropriate care, artist Demi Nandhra questions our reliance on social media to fill the void in ‘The Trauma Show’. In collaboration with Battersea Arts Centre, director Francesca Millican-Slater and artist Viv Gordon, Demi will investigate how audience and artist can create a healthier alternative to ‘trauma dumping’.
Following her critically acclaimed and award-winning Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut, ‘Life Is No Laughing Matter’ (2019), ‘The Trauma Show’ explores the impacts of adverse childhoods, making a show and dance out of it, mourning our little selves, ‘therapise’ culture and how TikTok can heal us all.
Demi is obsessed with trauma, childhood trauma, naming it, analysing it, healing from it, and getting-on-stage-to-perform-it. That last one might be a trauma response but you can decide that. Having entered her 30s Demi expected to be more whole, more healed, to not still feel like a child. Because trauma lives in the body and the body keeps the score, and we all know what that means. Disclaimer: Demi doesn’t know what that means.
Demi Nandhra is a neurodivergent artist and writer based in Birmingham. She makes and curates both solo & collaborative performances, live art, theatre, socially engaged projects, and most recently screenwriting and TV. Their focus tends to be around themes such as Mental Health, Oppression, Care and Trauma. Demi’s work is shown in the UK and internationally, with commissioning and programming partners including Sky TV, Summerhall, Wellcome Collection, Contact, Mac Birmingham, Battersea Arts Centre, Fierce Festival, Buzzcut Festival, LADA, Sophiensæle, REP, Warwick Arts Centre and Camden People’s Theatre.
‘The Trauma Show’ world premiere is at Fierce Festival (12-13 October), followed by a London run at Battersea Arts Centre (20 October – 5 November), before touring to Contact, Manchester (15-16 November). Further tour dates to be announced.
Commissioned by In Good Company, Cambridge Junction, Contact Theatre and Battersea Arts Centre, in association with Fierce Festival. Co-commissioned by Derby Theatre, Attenborough Arts Centre and Nonsuch Studios.
Demi Nandhra
The Trauma Show
Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, SW11 5TN
20 October – 5 November 2022
7.30pm
All performances are dry and Relaxed
