Warwick University Alumnus Directs Belgrade Theatre Show

With Bryony Kimmings' critically acclaimed A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer heading for the Belgrade Theatre 14-17 February, one member of the creative team will be re-treading familiar turf having spent her student days in Coventry.

Kirsty Housley, who studied Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick, has gone on to enjoy significant success as director, writer and dramaturg, pushing at the boundaries of traditional roles and styling herself as an all-round "theatremaker". In a recent interview with The Stage, she explained:

"I used to say that I'm a theatre director, but I got to the stage when it didn't feel as if it reflected what I did. So, I started to say that I was a director and a writer and a dramaturg and you could see people glazing over and losing interest. So now I just say I'm a theatremaker."

Originally hailing from Southampton, Housley served as Artistic Director of Camden's Etcetera Theatre from 2000-2003, winning the inaugural Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award in 2003. Things took off for her in 2007, when she joined the National Theatre for six months, assisting on Emma Rice's stage adaptation of A Matter of Life and Death.

In 2011, she directed Paper Birds' Thirsty, an alcohol-inspired, devised piece weaving together real booze-based confessions from responses to questionnaires and a drunken hotline. The same year, she won the Northern Stage Title Pending Award for She Stood at the Window.

Thirsty would ultimately stand her in good stead for her work on A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer, a production which similarly shines a light on real-life experiences ranging from the comic to the brutal, revealing difficult truths in the process.

Created by acclaimed theatre-maker Bryony Kimmings for Complicité Associates and the National Theatre, A Pacifist's Guide sets out to deconstruct conventional media narratives around illness, often sanitised, depoliticised and appropriated by healthy people as "inspirational" stories. Despite growing national awareness and high-profile charity campaigning, candid conversations about cancer still remain few and far between - something Kimmings and her collaborators hope to change.

"I think the main problem for me is that often, cancer is portrayed as someone's life starting when they get a diagnosis, and the story ending when they either survive or die. Illness is a much more transient thing that that - you go in and out of the worlds of well and ill all the time," says Kimmings.

"That neatness to the storytelling is something that's been devised by a well person, and often cancer is just something that's used to heighten whatever drama is already going on - it feels like there's more suspense if there's a clock ticking. But the reality is that cancer is really long and slow and boring dirty and messed up."

A Pacifist's Guide is the latest in a series of shows Housley has worked on for Complicité since 2007, beginning with her role as Associate Director of the Jun'ichiro Tanizaki-inspired Shun-kin. She later co-directed Simon McBurney's The Encounter, a play inspired by Petru Popescu's book Amazon Beaming. Performed by McBurney himself, the show toured to Warwick Arts Centre in 2015, and followed the story of National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre and his remarkable journey into the depths of the Amazon rainforest.

More recently, she co-directed Javaad Alipoor's The Believers are but Brothers, a technically inventive piece exploring the political impact of digital technology. Taking on the weighty subjects of online extremism, anonymity and hate speech, it premiered in 2017, and will run again this year at the Bush Theatre, where she is also working as dramaturg on Arinze Kene's Misty.

A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer runs on the Belgrade Theatre's B2 Stage from Thursday 14 until Saturday 17 February. Tickets are available to purchase now by calling the Belgrade Box Office team on or by visiting www.belgrade.co.uk where tickets are even cheaper.

The Belgrade Theatre Trust is a registered charity (number 219163). This means that all the money given, raised or earned is not distributed as profit but kept and reinvested in the work that we do. We are reliant on the valued support of our donors and sponsors to ensure that we can continue to develop our artistic and educational work and remain central to the communities that we serve.

The Belgrade Theatre is supported by Arts Council England who champion, develop and invest in artistic and cultural experiences that enrich people's lives. Between 2015 and 2018, they plan to invest £1.1 billion of public money from government and an estimated £700 million from the National Lottery to help create these experiences for as many people as possible across the country.

The Belgrade Theatre is part of a network of organisations promoting engagement with arts and culture in the lead-up to Coventry's City of Culture year in 2021. In December 2017, supporters of the Coventry bid gathered at the Belgrade Theatre in the heart of the city to watch the announcement live from Hull, with press on hand to broadcast their reactions to the country. Over the next few years, we will be working closely with both the City of Culture Trust and with communities across the region to present an exciting programme of shows and events reflecting the diversity and passion that made Coventry's bid a success.