BACKSTAGE IN BISCUITLAND
BACKSTAGE IN BISCUITLAND Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Festival, to 16 October (sold out), then QPAC Brisbane 19-23 October 2016.
Jessica Thom, from London, has Tourette’s syndrome. She has involuntary physical and vocal tics: she continually thumps her chest with her fist and utters the word, “biscuit” 16,000 times a day. She also, occasionally, will swear, which she apologises for in advance. She has no control over these tics; but rather than hide away from the world, as some have suggested she do, she has instead taken her story and put it on a stage for all the world to see.
Written and devised by Thom, Jess Mable Jones and Matthew Pountney, it’s basically a duologue with fellow “normal” performer (Mable Jones) and although not really a theatrical production – it’s more of a presentation – it’s informative, enlightening, engaging, and very funny. Jess Thom, as we say in Australia, “take’s the piss” out of herself and her condition and has a lot of fun doing it.
She was diagnosed in her twenties but has had tics since she was a child. Her reminiscences of her early life are also moving and a great antidote to the darkness caused by prejudice and misunderstanding. You leave the theatre with a humbling sense of her courage, determination, oh, and exhaustion on her behalf.
She never stops moving, talking, tic-ing, squinting, and laughing. You wonder how she eats, sleeps, or uses a keyboard; Jess understands this and remains on-stage after the show for her audience to ask such questions.
She is also a fund-raiser for her work with fellow sufferers … no! I shouldn’t use that word. Jess Thom takes the suffering out of the equation. She’s more of a Tourette’s Tolerator and for that alone she deserves a medal.
For Jess Thom, being disabled doesn’t mean less able, quite the opposite.
