Theatre / Bryony Kimmings
Bryony Kimmings: ‘I only make work about difficult subjects’
Multi-award-winning performance artist Bryony Kimmings is known and loved around the world for her semi-autobiographical stage shows, including Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model (2013), Fake it ‘til you Make It (2015), and I’m a Phoenix, Bitch (2018).
She is now back on tour in 2026 with Bog Witch, her first solo stage show in five years, which comes to Bristol Old Vic on June 5-6.
In it, she charts her personal journey to the wilderness, moving back to nature with her son in a quest to re-root herself; a momentous decision she describes as “a last-ditch attempt to be happy and sane”.
Bog Witch is also the first time Kimmings has made work that is overtly about the climate emergency.
She told Bristol24/7 about how this came about, as well as sharing her reflections on a lifetime of channelling her own experiences through her art.
Bryony Kimmings, Bog Witch – photo: courtesy of the artist
How are you feeling about being on the road again?
“I think for me, the really stressy bit of the show is the opening. The making is fun and a puzzle to be solved whilst playing and scheming and creating with friends. And the touring is like the spoils. I get to do my favourite thing, the thing I think I’m good at in front of people. Taking the product to market and sharing it. So, I’m excited. I can’t wait to go places I’ve not been in six or so years (like Bristol!) and places I’ve never been!
“I think the audience reaction does sometimes vary from place to place with shows but on quite a joke-by-joke level. I’m off the back of running this show in for weeks in Soho. So, I don’t expect really huge changed reactions. I have however edited, changed, tightened and I think it’ll be emotional. It’s always emotional talking about the planet. Of course, my hope is wild standing ovations (ha!) but I think people connecting with the topic and having a good and perhaps even enlightening night out is the gift. I’m ever so excited to get it out there.”
For many people, the climate crisis still feels too frightening or overwhelming to think about. How have your own attitudes changed towards thinking about it? Could you have made this show five years ago, for example?
“Heck no. I was just at the beginning of an awakening. I was exactly that person who found it frightening and overwhelming. Don’t talk to me about it! I will do what I can do. It’s probably not imminent, I’m hiding, I’m busy, they will change things (who, I don’t know), it’s not here yet. I have a life and it’s stressful enough. All valid coping mechanisms and reasonable in the face of something giant, scary and seemingly impossible to fix (otherwise why wouldn’t we).
“I think meeting my partner Will was a blessing in so many ways. And one of those blessings was holding my hand into the climate movement. At first, I was overwhelmed, scared and sad, which is a natural feeling when dealing with this issue. Its grief, its rage, it’s a paradigm shift. Everything felt impossible and depressing, but then once you start to look at what IS happening, what the future COULD look like, how there is so much power in nature and natural cycles. It all settles again. It’s a process. One that I felt led me right back to mother nature and a feeling of real connection in a world full of fakery.”
What do you think the role of art can be in allowing ourselves to grapple with difficult subjects? To what extent is this a factor for you when you’re conceiving and developing new work?
“Have you ever heard the saying ‘culture is upstream of politics’? Never before has that been more important, for all the poly crisis issues – not just climate or ecology. Our job as artists, writers and creators is to tell those new stories we don’t yet know, to make the new myths that allow us to face this huge thing, and to explain in fun and unthreatening terms what is coming.
“I only make work about difficult subjects. I’m totally and utterly obsessed with talking about the things that people don’t want to talk about, or are too frightened to. It’s been kind of thing for my whole career that is my modus operandi. I think of myself as both the Soothsayer and the Jester. I kind of take dry data and big topics and put them through a lens of autobiography and fun so that we can really talk about that when we leave the theatre that evening.”
Your work is characterised for its blend of genres, harnessing comedy, performance art, music, dance and mythology to interrogate a subject that often has strong autobiographical components. Who do you draw your inspiration from?
“I am inspired by lots of different things all the time; it constantly changes, and I get obsessed with things. But I could probably give you a ballpark of where my style came from. As a child, it was watching John Waters films like Hairspray, Cry-Baby and Pink Flamingos (which I probably shouldn’t have been watching so young!). I also really love music, particularly Talking Heads and Kate Bush. Again, it’s all quite performative, and quite dramatic. I studied performance art, so a lot of my references are from 1960s and 70s performance artists like Marina Abramovich and Annie Sprinkle.
“I love standup more on the weird side of things… characters, meanderings, weirdos. But I also really like research, history and science; understanding the world and how it works. Often I will look at something quite dry or some kind of information that needs to be imported and then sex it up with whatever type of performance helps to make it palatable.
“I’m a bit of a scatterbrain so I think my shows feel like a mix of genres because I get bored easily. Ha! I love singing, I love dancing, I love messing around and over time I have learnt a lot more about stagecraft, so I like leaning on my sound designers and my video designers to really bring things to life in a very hyper-theatrical way. I also like to choose a visual theme for a work which is often quite mythological or shamanic.”
To what extent do you make sense of your life through the creative process? Is there a degree of catharsis in sharing your authentic self while also putting some distance between you and the ‘on-stage’ version you have created?
“I like to think of my practice as 90 per cent human entertainment and 10 per cent therapy. Of course, by talking through your own experiences and turning them into something other people might chime with, you are processing events in your life naturally. But I do try to make sure that I’m over whatever I’m talking about psychologically before I start to put it on stage, otherwise it tips over into self-indulgence or into something it doesn’t feel quite safe enough for the audience.
“I also say that Bryony Kimmings on stage is probably only 50 per cent me and 50 per cent absolute showbiz (and over the top). I’ll leave some secrets at home or locked in my dressing room just for me and I wear her like a shield sometimes. But the stories are all true.”
As a human, and a parent living through a climate emergency, how do you feel about the future now?
“I’m feeling very hopeful. Connecting and engaging with this issue has made it so much easier to think about the future. I have had to do quite a lot of soul-searching about what I do and don’t want, about what matters and what doesn’t. I think the main idea is that living in the future will be smaller and more local, built around our community. It’s about reducing earnings and outgoings, because commerce and capitalism is going to end. We need to be growing our own food, making our own energy, and moving away from the structures that may collapse.
“We are starting a co-op here, and I think we’ll see a lot more people doing that – living as a collective of people who will help one another. The nuclear family is over; chosen families and group living is where it’s at for me. There will always be the space for the storyteller, and so I will continue to be her. The future is bright, but you do need to future-proof your life for the inevitable changes that are coming. I will put some book recommendations onto my website, because there’s so much brilliant literature about the future to feel excited about.”
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Bog Witch is at Bristol Old Vic on June 5-6 at 7.30pm. Tickets are available at www.bristololdvic.org.uk. Follow @bryonykimmings for updates.
All photos: (unless stated); Rosie Powell (from Bog Witch at Soho Theatre)
Read next:
- Review: The Beautiful Future is Coming, Bristol Old Vic – ‘A shocking and sharp call to action, and an urgent triumph for Nancy Medina’
- ‘If you can laugh, you feel less afraid’ – Stuart Goldsmith on his latest comedy obsession
- Immersive climate-inspired sound installation coming to Tyntesfield
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