Grace Plant (Graceless) and Sarah McCourt (Fragments, Monstrous Love Revisited) draw on their autobiographical theatre practice in this practical workshop looking at staging your stories. Participants are encouraged to bring along an object and/or story that they would like to work with during the session.

This is a public workshop. We ask that you are sensitive to others in choosing the story or object that you bring with you to work on.

Sarah McCourt began creating autobiographical theatre whilst studying an MFA Staging Shakespeare at Exeter University, as a way of speaking back to dead white men. They took their first performance to Im Stammelbachspeicher, Hildesheim, Exeter Phoenix and Camden People’s Theatre. They have since created collaborative autobiographical performances for Restless Theatre, exploring domestic abuse and losing their mother to Alzheimer’s. Using collage that brings together objects, found text and images, their approach is based in their working class roots employing film, voice over and movement to tell bitter-sweet stories that engage with the messiness of what it is to be human.

Grace Plant is a theatre performer and producer, as well as a founding member of Doohickie Productions. After studying Acting at ALRA, Grace developed her solo show Graceless, which explores mother/daughter relationships and growing up as a very awkward teenager. This was performed as a scratch piece at the 2021 Exeter Fringe Festival, before a sold out run at the Exeter Northcott’s Reclaim Festival 2025.

Additional information

Duration: 75 mins

Age guidance: 18+

Venue: Studio 1, Exeter Phoenix

*Subject to a £1.50 ticketing system charge. We don’t charge this to make a profit. Find out more >>