It’s appropriate that Sarah Power’s new play Grud is opening at Hampstead Theatre having been part of the theatre’s INSPIRE 2022 programme for emerging playwrights. Her previous work has included Pig at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre and Mandrake which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting, the Papatango New Writing Prize and was a finalist in the Hope Mill Theatre’s Through the Mill playwriting competition.
Jaz Woodcock-Stewart directs the three-hander starring Catherine Ashdown, Kadiesha Belgrave and Karl Theobald with the production currently in rehearsals ahead of previews next week. As the cast and creative team refine the play, we caught up with Power to find out more about her inspiration for Grud and what it’s like to be opening the show at Hampstead Theatre.
Q&A with Sarah Power
What’s it like to be making your Hampstead Theatre debut, having been part of the theatre’s INSPIRE programme for emerging playwrights?
It’s extremely exciting! I wrote the play with the Hampstead Downstairs space in mind, so it feels amazing and quite surreal that it’s now going on there. And it’s been really cool to have been working with Hampstead Theatre for the whole process, from initially pitching the idea when applying for INSPIRE, to watching the show come together now.
What can you tell us about Grud?
Grud follows the story of 17-year-old Bo, beginning when she meets space enthusiast and all round legend Aicha at a recruitment drive for the sixth form’s unsuccessful ‘Space Club’. The two then begin to build a very beautiful friendship (and also a tiny spaceship). But whilst Bo’s life at college is starting to take off, she is also desperately trying to keep secret her home life with alcoholic Grud. And then everything starts to get messy.
What was the inspiration for the play?
I wanted to write something which would articulate the feeling of standing between two parts of your life and trying desperately to keep them separate from each other, and about how impossible that ultimately is. I think if you’re growing up with a parent suffering from addiction, it’s common to feel very desperate to keep that a secret and separate from the rest of your life, but you never really can. So I think wanting to find a way to represent that experience visually was the initial starting point of the play.
What was the development process like?
The development process has been great, I worked on the script a lot with Tessa Walker (former Associate Director at Hampstead Theatre) when I was on INSPIRE, and that was really instrumental to me in working out what the script was going to be. Initially it had started as much more surreal, but working with Tessa helped me to get to the core of what it was I wanted to write about (even if I was a bit scared to do it), and then to stop trying to overcomplicate it.
Is there anything you hope audiences take away from the play?
I hope people have a good time! And laugh a lot, and maybe cry, but in an uplifting way, and leave feeling full of joy about life and also gently humming a Talking Heads song to themselves.
Grud is at Hampstead Theatre Downstairs from 28 June to 3 August
