Interview: Tanieth Kerr, ‘HEADACHE’

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 Tanieth Kerr about her piece, Headache.

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

My name is Tanieth I am the creator of HEADACHE. I have an undergraduate degree in performing arts and a master’s in musical theatre and I was a covid graduate twice…which was really bad luck. My first professional theatre role was as a swing in a panto which was chaotic but it taught me a lot of really important skills and was so much fun.

My dad had a brain injury in 2018 after a cycling accident which turned my life inside out and I have always been a writer but after that, I used writing as a release for all the things I felt I couldn’t say out loud. It was from that release that HEADACHE was born.

As a kid, I used to write and perform plays in my living room all the time but HEADACHE is the first play that I have worked on consistently and produced in ‘real life’. It’s been an amazing learning curve and I have had a brilliant time working with my director Katy Livsey.

What is your show about?

HEADACHE is a one woman play about a 20-year-old girl whose entire life is shattered by her dad’s brain injury. HEADACHE discusses what it is like to be a young person, far away from home as she tries to rebuild her life in the face of anxiety and loneliness. 

What was the inspiration for HEADACHE and what’s the development process been to get to this stage?

HEADACHE started as a collection of different pieces of writing in response to how I was feeling after my dad’s brain injury that accumulated into a different play called ‘An evening with me, I guess’.

After one performance in 2022, I started reworking the piece. I went to Edinburgh Fringe that year and saw a show called Headcase by Kristen Mcilquham and her masterful story telling really influenced me to bring my original play ‘closer’ to the truth. So I worked and wrote and cut and gave up and wrote some more and debuted the new play HEADACHE at Brighton Fringe in 2023 and put it on again in 2024 this time with a director Katy Livsey who is also attached to this Edinburgh production!  

In terms of inspiration, it came from how lonely and isolated I felt after my dad’s brain injury because none of my friends really understood what had happened to my dad. Especially when he was all healed up and looked ‘back to normal.’

Then I read that according to Brian injury UK 350,000 people will be admitted to hospital with an acquired brain injury every year in the UK.

That’s a pretty big number on its own. That’s 1 in 200 people. There are many great charities that offer support to those people like Headway but this statistic got me thinking about all the other people also effected by the injury. The family members and friends of the brain injury survivor and how their lives change. Some become carers, some lose touch, and for some, their lives change just as drastically and dramatically as the brain injury sufferer.

If you assume that each person admitted with an acquired brain injury has 4 people in their inner circle that love them and care about them, then there are 1.4 million people effected by brain injury. And I thought how could I possibly be so isolated when that many people are out there who understand what this is like? And I wanted nothing more than to connect with them.

So I began writing because I wanted to understand how I felt. But I finished HEADACHE because I want to reach out to those 1.4 million people and help them feel seen and less alone.

What made you want to take HEADACHE to the Fringe?

It has been my dream to bring something I have written up the Fringe and I am so excited that this is the year! I have been fortunate enough to be able to do Brighton Fringe two years in a row and I knew that 2024 was the year I was going to achieve my ultimate dream!

Apart from seeing HEADACHE, what’s your top tip for anybody heading for Edinburgh this summer?

See as many shows as possible!

My list is growing constantly but I’m really looking forward to seeing That’s Not My Name (at Zoo Venues), Oh Calm Down (at Summerhall Edinburgh), The Solve it Squad (at Assembly George Square) and Character Flaw (at Underbelly Bristo Square) to name a few!

Why should people book HEADACHE?

Because it’s a hopeful show. The overarching theme of HEADACHE and (I hope) one of the takeaways from the show is that if you are going through something and you reach out to people, someone will be there for you- you don’t have to go through it alone. In HEADACHE it’s the effects of brain injury but it could be translated across many different things.

It will get better and you are not alone.

When and where can people see HEADACHE?

HEADACHEis on 12th-20th Augustat12:10pmin theSpace@Niddry Street (Studio)!