Stop Trying to be Fantastic

Product Information

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. Bringing art to unexpected places and helping everyone find their creative spark. Welcome to Cygnet’s Dream Festival.

When she spoke her last words, I was surprised to discover my cheeks were wet with the tears that had fallen, listening to the truthfulness of Molly’s final words. Ones that we all must surely take on board. 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) At first, this show seems stranded between poetic horror and funny self-help, as if Bridget Jones had wandered into The Raven (only with a magpie). But it’s a slow burner and by the end is absorbing. Writer and actor, Molly Naylor, plays a version of herself who was traumatised by a magpie at a young age. The magpie then stalks her, and she develops strategies for getting the magpie to go away. Those pesky little magpies: astute, sneaky, determined. Their presence can be felt even when they’re not visible to other people. It’s highly likely that, at some point, you’ll encounter one. Or maybe more than one. You might not realise its significance at first. Yet from year to year, situation to situation, despite your best efforts to ignore it, there’s an incessant, attention-seeking tap-tap-tap. Molly begins her story in the same place that it ends, with her sat in a room of a fertility clinic, and the aim of becoming an egg donor. But this was not to be….I’ve been wanting to write about this period of my life for a while but couldn’t quite find the right way of structuring it. I then developed the magpie character, and realised this was a very helpful device. 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.

Molly’s strategies for coping with her meandering life, constantly trying to please people, to be liked, to get on, are all made with the intention of running to escape the magpie, to be free of him. It becomes her own personal quest for freedom and, ultimately, happiness.Most of these strategies are destructive, although the first one, storytelling, gave her a successful career path. The second one, boozing, was not so fortunate. It led to unwise relationships, shame, humiliation and general problems with her health. But anything that makes the magpie go away, gets noted, and replicated. I’m performing at Summerhall for the first time. It’s my favourite venue in Edinburgh, so I’m very happy I get to perform and hang out there. Passion and pain have clearly forged this award-winning writer/performer’s work. Making an hour pass in the blink of an eye, yet filling that space with purposeful intention, Molly stands alone – vulnerable, funny, self-reliant. The difficult, answerable questions she promises to explore (How can we stop ourselves from feeling bad? How can we stop others from feeling bad?), the drunken mistakes and lurches she gets lost in, and the emotional revelations that buffet and bruise - these all weave and wander into crystal moments of startling clarity. A fox in the headlights, a mistimed but desperately needed drink in a bar, the sound of a beak tap-tap-tapping at a rainy train window. 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.

Award-winning writer/performer Molly Naylor has some ideas to share – with a little help from a feathered fiend, who may not quite be the monster it seems. Review by Jeremy Day. 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? It is clear to see why Stop Trying to be Fantastic had such a great run at Edinburgh Fringe. A performance that lends itself to smaller performance spaces and possibly would feel even better in a makeshift performance space like those at the Fringe. The simple but strong integrated lighting and sound design round the production of well. A post shared by Grace Petrie (@gracepetriemusic) DIVA: Hey Grace. How’s the vibe up there in Edinburgh? It may or may not include some stuff that could be generously described as comedy. It may or may not have some songs. She doesn’t really know but at this point she’s just happy to be out of the house.

Events nearby

I’ve also directed Butch Ado About Nothing by Grace Petrie, so I’ll be looking forward to seeing that! I’m also excited about seeing Chris Singleton and Roann McCloskey.

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. 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. We have a huge variety of events. Something for everyone. From community workshops at the Library, children’s shows at Cygnet Theatre, stand-up comedy at Topsham Brewery, folk music at the Corn Exchange, professional development workshops, storytelling at the RAMM, music at St Nicholas Priory, youth shows at the Hall and Multi-Story Orchestra in IKEA’s car park. Stop Trying to Be Fantastic is a mostly true story about suffering, saviour-complex, self-acceptance, and a magpie who refuses to quit.Stop Trying to be Fantastic has only a couple of stops left on its tour (NORWICH THEATRE (STAGE 2) – 19 May & LONDON 2NORTHDOWN – 22 May). It is a show that will offer a charming theatre outing while making you think about “ what we owe to each other and what we owe to ourselves”. It will certainly make you laugh, while making you think about the metaphor that you are trying to escape. With only a few trivial theatrical weaknesses, the direction of the show is solid with clever minimalistic choices proving a wise decision. The story starts with a metaphorical magpie which flies into Naylor’s childhood house. Magpies are considered to be a symbol of intelligence and wit and also, more menacingly, deceit, and the embodiment of dread. Molly tells us, often humorously, of her attempts to drive the bird away and totally engages her audience who want to know more of her adventurous journey. She takes us through familiar nostalgic territory and awakens in us memories of our own struggles. Her strategies included: getting drunk, throwing herself totally into work, and doing amazing acts of kindness. She desires approval, (don’t we all?), but striving to reach that, we often sacrifice relationships on the way. Grace: It’s lovely. It’s my first Fringe so I don’t have much to compare it to, but it’s just so nice being able to see stuff every day. As an artist, it’s very inspiring. It’s been a pretty big year for you. You opened for Hannah Gadsby at the Palladium, played Glasto and joined The Guilty Feminist tour down under. Have there been any “pinch yourself” moments?