One day, a magpie comes into a little girl’s house by mistake. It decides it likes her. She spends the next twenty-five years trying to get away from it. I’m a weird mix of lots of things. My work borrows from lots of forms: storytelling, poetry, stand-up, theatre… It then becomes slightly meta as we realise she’s writing the magpie story as a screenplay, pitching it to young men called Josh, and feeling mortified in the process as they struggle with the concept of someone living in ‘not London’. She’s in Norwich, which they think is in Scotland. The magpie, it turns out, is a metaphor for trauma, and trauma is hot right now.

Stop Trying To Be Fantastic is about the strategies we use to avoid pain and suffering, and the impact these strategies have on us. It’s based on a period in my life and tells a mostly-true story about a strange series of events and what I learned from experiencing them. It’s about saviour-complex, the things that haunt us and what we can do about them. It’s a sort of anti self-help show, that I’m hoping might actually help.

Event details

STOP TRYING TO BE FANTASTIC – MOLLY NAYLOR – DRUM THEATRE 5 th May 2023 Produced in association with Inn Crowd Molly Naylor is a scriptwriter, poet, performer and graphic novelist. Her stories and plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and she has performed at festivals and events all over the world. She has featured on several renowned radio shows and podcasts including A Good Read and The Guilty Feminist. Her third poetry collection is published by Bad Betty Press. She is the co-creator and writer of Sky One comedy After Hours. She wrote and performed the acclaimed solo spoken-word shows Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You and My Robot Heart. Her first graphic novel Lights, Planets, People! was published by Avery Hill in September 2021 and won the Broken Frontier award for best graphic novel. Her new live show Stop Trying to be Fantastic is currently touring the UK. Do you have a nagging voice inside your head? How do you deal with it? Stop Trying to be Fantastic by Molly Naylor explores the challenges of having that constant internal nagging. Naylor’s beautiful lyrical and poetic writing carries the one-person show, setting strong foundations for the poignant personal story. In more of a performative TED talk way, Molly takes us through her life living with her metaphorical Magpie and how she has been trying to escape its unwanted presence. The deep and personal stories told are all relatable and powerful drawing you in and making you evaluate the impact of your own Magpie.

She is currently working on several original TV projects, and her feature film 'I'll See Myself Out' is in development with Jeva Films. Stop Trying To Be Fantastic poetically confronts our deepest fears of abandonment, of being unloved and unlovable. Burrowing into the complexity of why we often find it so unbearable to feel bad or face our problems head on, it highlights how the pursuit of being ‘perfect’ for everyone else stops us from living a life that is actually perfect for us. Of course, it’s a metaphor. A symbol of a trauma not discussed; silenced and suppressed. Stop Trying To Be Fantastic turns the elephant in the room to the magpie in the room. And, if you’ve ever witnessed a bird when it accidentally finds itself trapped you know exactly how it panics, thrashing about leaving havoc in its wake. Stop Trying To Be Fantastic is that which gets left behind once the incident has passed. The initial mess might be cleaned up, yet an echo remains. Blue by Joni Mitchell… or the Blue Album by Weezer? Can I have both because they both have blue in the title? (yes you can) A post shared by Grace Petrie (@gracepetriemusic) DIVA: Hey Grace. How’s the vibe up there in Edinburgh?The story is one that, as it evolved, felt like it could have been told about so many of us. Our self-doubt following us around, sat on our shoulder, like the magpie metaphor the story is staged around. Molly develops a lifelong learned habit of being a people pleaser, putting others first, being always altruistic. How many of us do the same traits apply to? Award-winning writer/performer Molly Naylor presents this funny, frank, lyrical storytelling show that explores what we owe to each other versus what we owe to ourselves. It’s an anti self-help show... that might actually help.