Lydia will be your compère for the WORD! Comedy special. She is a performer and poet
and the host and creative director of WORD! She and Abi Willock spoke about the excitement of
the comedy special and WORD!’s collaboration with headline act Rob Gee.
Abi:
Is the comedy special a one-off event, or can we hope to see more comedy extravaganzas in the
future?
Lydia: It's a one-off that for the last few years has happened every year as
part of Leicester Comedy Festival... The last time it happened was just before the pandemic, so
we're doing it again with the same line-up and venue to make sure it wasn't us.
Abi:
We’re so excited to see Rob Gee perform, how did you and WORD! come to be in collaboration
with him?
Lydia: We met through a knife fight in a hospital carpark over 20 years
ago. Jokes! Unusually for a medical setting there were no knives. I encountered Rob as a young
person going through a tough time and having just dropped out of art school. He introduced me to
poetry, successfully steering me away from more lucrative and financially stable career paths.
Two decades on, Rob's status as a reformed psychiatric nurse and outrageously nice person with
an international poetry resume and no criminal convictions - have made him a dream to include as
one of our key Associate Artists.
Abi: You’ve been a performer for a long time
now, how do you calm any pre-show nerves?
Lydia: I don't really. Nope, nothing
to say about that... Ok, I suppose though (really) through a combination of preparation and
perspective. If I've prepared, then however nervous I might feel I can tell myself that
everything is in place for things to go well and everything else is the just the primeval
vestige of fight or flight monkey-brain. If that doesn't work, then having a bit of perspective
can help - that I'm not about to be eaten by a lion and the audience will be wanting me to do
well (unless they're looking for a very niche experience...)
Abi: Where has been
your favourite place to perform?
Lydia: I think my favourite gigs have been about the people rather than the place. So a gig
I had at local night, Some-antics, about a year before the pandemic (everything in
relation!) was thoroughly lovely because I felt really welcome - and the audience, as with
WORD!s - was really warm... That and because collaboration and being part of a community
makes me stupid-loved-up-fuzzy. I've also absolutely loved performing in more unconventional
settings - so being poet-in-residence with Arriva Buses and Literary Leicester, and
performing apocalyptic zombie poems on night buses to confused members of the public - was
amazing! A couple of other really stand out gigs were at London's 100 Club and Royal Albert
Hall - where you could have lit the atmosphere with a strong-out breath. Headlining Liv
Torc's Hip Yak Poetry Shack at Womad was also epic - I performed some of my set whilst
holding a small child (mine!) and the beautiful thing that Liv has built made it easy to
shine. Ultimately, that's what you and everyone else concerned wants, and it's what we aim
to give to those coming to any of our projects and events at WORD!
Lydia
will perform as part of WORD!s Comedy Special this Tuesday, Feb 15th, 8.30pm @ Wygston
House. See
here for more
