Spoken Word Theatre is coming to Glastonbury! BI-TOPIA, Sam Danson’s debut show, is one of four theatre shows being performed in the Poetry&Words tent at this year’s festival. It’s been touring the country in a production directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair, with the play challenging the reasons why LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately affected by poor mental health, and the awkward struggles of coming to terms with your sexuality when growing up in a military family.
Ahead of landing at the festival, we caught up with Danson to find out more.
Q&A with Sam Danson
1. Can you tell us a little about yourself and how you got into live performance?
I grew up in Preston and moved to Manchester about 10 years ago. I have always connected with live performance, and I’m passionate about it being a great way to talk about serious issues and impact positive change in our society. A few years before I had done my first show, I was the victim of a homophobic attack, and was struggling with my mental health. All of this had a big affect on me and I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it, or get help.
I still saw a lot of theatre around that time, and the shows I was seeing that explored those themes I was going through seemed to be very insular and made me even less likely to talk about my own struggles. I then started to think about how you make a theatre show that genuinely positively impacts people going through issues silently, how do you authentically encourage people to talk?
From that moment on, I wanted to create a show that would allow that to happen. I believe BI-TOPIA achieves that goal, I included universal themes and through research and outreach built the show beyond my own view point. The show has successfully raised awareness of not only mental health, but also bisexuality and the issues so many people face growing up in our society.
The show follows one character, a bisexual man coming of age and trying to figure everything out, but it can relate to anyone. Everybody struggles to fit in, nobody feels totally welcome in every space, and what I want to do with this show is have more people talking about that, and normalising difficult discussion.
2. What’s it like to be performing at this year’s Glastonbury Festival?
Absolutely amazing! I am so excited, first of all just to be at the festival and experience it for the first time, but also to bring a show I am incredibly proud of to the biggest festival in the world.
I have never been before, so to be coming for the first time having been booked to perform my show, feels like a dream come true!
3. What can you tell us about your plans for the show?
The show is my debut professional solo theatre show, it’s entertaining, high energy, comedic and thoughtful. After Glastonbury, BI-TOPIA is off to Edinburgh Festival for the whole month in August! I then hope to continue touring it across the country and maybe even internationally.
4. How do you approach performing at a festival like this?
My plans for Glastonbury are to make it as big and immersive as possible, I want the audience to really feel part of the performance.
There is so much going on at this festival that I want to make sure I really grab the audience’s attention, and keep it for the full show. It’ll certainly be unique to any other show seen on the tour.
5. Will you be checking out any other acts across the weekend?
Definitely! I’m so excited to see Dua Lipa, Paul Heaton, Alvvays, SZA and much more, I also can’t wait to check out other theatre on at the festival, and wander around taking in the atmosphere!
Sam Danson: Bi-Topia is at Poetry&Words at Glastonbury festival on 28 and 29 June
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