Interview: Emma-Louise Howell & Hetty Hodgson, ‘I Really Do Think This Will Change Your Life’

Ahead of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024, we’re chatting with a range of creatives who will be heading to the city over August to find out more about their shows. Today we’re chatting with Emma-Louise Howell and Hetty Hodgson about I Really Do Think This Will Change Your Life.

Can you tell us a bit about you and your career so far?

This is our debut as a Writer-Director duo but we’re lucky enough to have been friends for some time. We met at uni, made some student theatre and have gone off to learn, make and explore on separate careers before coming back together last year. Emma’s very much focussed on writing: she trained with RADA, Birkbeck, the BFI, Arvon Foundation, the Mercury and has had work performed across the country in venues such as Leicester Curve, Theate503 and on BBC Introducing and also works as an Assistant Director for Film and TV, most recently completing a few Netflix jobs in the midst of redrafting the play. Hetty is a theatre director focussed on collaborative processes to make innovative new work which is both political and playful. She is the Artistic Director of Pigfoot, and currently the Bryan Forbes Trainee director with the National Youth Theatre. This year she’s been working with ThickSkin (who are supporting I Really Do!) as an associate director on their national tour of Peak Stuff, and on a brand new devised show made with 35 LIPA students! 

It’s a real joy to have been able to learn and bring our individual experiences and careers together and see where our different experiences and specialisms can compliment and challenge each other. And hopefully this will be the start of even more collaborations throughout our career.

What is your show about?

In a nutshell, it’s about Girl Boss Feminism and those Get Rich Quick Schemes that promise to change your life and let you live as a financially free, globe-trotting wonder woman. 

Secondarily, it’s about feminism, capitalism, social media pressures, burnout, identity, all the juicy big stuff that our teeth have got stuck into. 

What was the inspiration for I Really Do Think This Will Change Your Life and what’s the development process been to get to this stage?

Emma: Whenever anyone asks this question, I always end up telling the story about how my entire Sixth Form was sucked into an MLM. One of my friends ex-girlfriends went to a different school, swooped in and all of a sudden girls were selling mascaras in the toilets and we were handed out brochures at registration. I didn’t write the play there and then: I was a stressed and serious 17 year old making A Level Drama pieces about cannibalism. But, a few years, I was on the Mercury Theatre’s Playwriting Course with Kenny Emson and we had to pitch a few ideas. I always love theatre that celebrates performativity and theatricality and the big, fat, shiny, glossy world of MLMs and Girl Bosses really seemed to lean into that. I told Kenny about my Sixth Form business ordeal and his response was “That’s f*cking mental mate, you have to write about that”. And here we are. 

Hetty: Waaay back in the deep dark depths of 2021, me and Emma were chatting on whatsapp late one night and she asked if she could send me her play, which she then attached to an email signed off “Don't hate me X”. Over the next two years, through voice notes, emails, text messages, days in rooms surrounded by post it notes, draft after draft after draft, the Mercury said “let’s do it”. And it was the biggest privilege to get to assemble a real life dream team of creatives to bring V1. of I Really Do Think This Will Change Your Life to life at the Mercury in 2023. Emma’s play is perhaps what all directors & creative teams hope & dream for - full of space for play, collaboration, theatricality & imagination, and our process was able to encompass all that. . Because it sits so much in the digital realm of Multi-Level Marketing and Girl Bosses, we’ve really tried to replicate the social media world with video design that features GIFs and emojis, immersive sound design and and whirlwind of vibrant lights and movement - so our design team were integral in bringing that to life. I am so excited for the chance to get to bring a (in the words of Daft Punk), harder, better, faster, stronger version of that show to life in Edinburgh, supported by ThickSkin, Pleasance & Mercury and to re-assemble the buzziest brains in the bizz for some more collaboration. 

What made you want to take I Really Do Think This Will Change Your Life to the Fringe?

We’d always seen this show at Edinburgh. It’s punchy, colourful, silly, chaotic - all things that the Fringe celebrates and it felt like there was no better home for it, really.

We were also super lucky to be supported and encouraged by the Mercury and Pleasance’s National Partnership programme as well as ThickSkin’s Supported Artist Programme, all incredible initiatives for early career artists like us which allowed and encouraged us to go up - we wouldn’t be there without any of them.

Apart from seeing I Really Do Think This Will Change Your Life, what’s your top tip for anybody heading for Edinburgh this summer?

Get the brochure, cut it up into little squares, pull a show out the hat like a tombola and watch it. 

You’ll feel like you’ve won a prize and you’ll also stumble across a show you’ll probably have never seen or booked or experienced. 

Total caveat: I’ve never actually done this but last year my mate booked a show I would never have watched myself and I ended up on the stage wrapped in clingfilm with 6 strangers I’d never met and it was so good that we all stayed behind at the bar and did karaoke afterwards.

It was my favourite Fringe memory ever and, if it was down to me, it wouldn’t have happened. 

Why should people book I Really Do Think This Will Change Your Life?

If you don’t book for the fact that we really do think that it will change your life … book for the colour, the chaos & the comedy and stay for a story which is both personal & universal, hilarious & heartfelt. If you’ve ever received a DM from a random stranger asking you to join their business - this one’s for you. 

When and where can people see I Really Do Think This Will Change Your Life?

12.15pm at 10Dome @ Pleasance Dome every day.