Guest Blog: Performer and Writer Isabel Renner on Imagination, Freedom & Overcoming Shyness in Her Play WYLD WOMAN

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been painfully shy. For equally as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be an actor. These may seem like divergent roads down the wood of a single personality, but I’ve found them to be inherently intertwined. It is shyness that made acting such a necessity to me. 

When I first began school, I did not speak. Not because I couldn’t – I was quite talkative at home – but because I was terrified of all the new people. A few months into the year, someone gifted me a pink wig. I, of course, chose to wear it to school, as any sensible four-year-old would. And something rather startling happened… I spoke! And not only that, I spoke a lot. I was expressive and energetic and opinionated. I remember not being surprised by my stark shift in demeanour, even though everyone around me was, exceedingly so. To me this was inevitable. I had simply been waiting for my costume change.

I didn’t wear the wig forever, or even for much of the rest of the year, for reasons which elude me now. I returned to being shy, although I gradually started speaking to classmates and teachers. The years went on, as years are wont to do, and though I remained outwardly timid, my inner world was booming and prosperous with life. There were characters and subplots and villages and voices. Everyday, after school, I would retreat into my imagination. It was a refuge from how vulnerable and afraid I felt being around people all day. But it was also a wellspring of inspiration and fuel for making meaning out of things… things that are confusing to a child, things that are still confusing to an adult (this adult, at least) – life is a confusing thing. 

When I was ten years old, my school put on an end-of-the-year play. It was meant to be a devised effort, but I somehow had manoeuvred my way into being the sole author of the piece. I was also cast as the lead, although I may have had an unfair advantage, what with my intimate understanding of the text. I was still extremely shy, but I suppose I got a little tenacious when it came to my role in such an endeavour. This play was about America, but I made the bold and rather random choice to give my character a British accent. It was certainly not accurate, but at the time I remember believing it to be consummate dialect work. 

The night of the performance had arrived. My class was backstage in anxious anticipation. We were about to play to a sold-out auditorium of parents and teachers and the rest of the school. This was the biggest moment of our lives, we all knew this. We carried this weight nobly. We were professionals. We took our places. I, strangely, was not nervous. And I was nervous about everything; raising my hand in class, asking if I could join a group for lunch, sneezing and worrying I made too much of a scene. But this did not scare me. This felt safe. The curtain rose. I took my first breath. I uttered my first (self-penned) line. 

I didn’t sound like ‘myself,’ I didn’t act like ‘myself,’ but I had never felt more myself than in that moment. The world inside of me was finally moving through me, and I felt finally connected to the room around me. I could feel everything. I could feel my parents’ pride, my teachers’ shock, maybe even… was that my crush’s admiration? This may be a planted memory, but I think it was. Again, I was not surprised by my sudden audacity. It felt inevitable again. I had simply been waiting for my character. It was an exhilarating and redemptive night. I have been chasing that feeling ever since.

My solo show Wyld Woman is autobiographically about the shyest girl in the world, but it is filled with the kind of outrageous characters that set my spirit free when I was little. Doing this show is, of course, a grand attempt to relive that moment of glory in my elementary school auditorium. But I do hope to see you there.