Spoken word artist, playwright and theatre-maker Mel Bradley takes her show For The Love of Mary to this year’s Glastonbury Festival.
In the show, Bradley documents her journey to discover the Virgin Mary through conversational stories shared with various Irish Women, viewed through the lens of a displaced woman from a Unionist background who has spent most of her life living in Nationalist areas in the North of Ireland.
We caught up with her to find out more.
Q&A with Mel Bradley
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I’m an outspoken neurodiverse queer feminist performer with a candid voice and an unhealthy obsession with the Virgin Mary. I like to think of myself as a creative genius with the attention span of a gnat and an incapacity for boredom. I use my voice as a tool for activism and believe that we need to tell better stories that have better representation.
How did you get into live performance?
A. I started out as a slam poet and cut my teeth performing in rowdy bars. My first slam was in 2009 and it was the Derry heat of the All-Ireland Poetry Slam, the scene was small here and we were just finding our feet in the spoken word realm, slams were really the only way to get to perform spoken word. From that I fell back into theatre, which was a passion of mine as a teenager. Over time, I fused the two together and now have three spoken word shows and a play under my belt.
What’s it like to be performing at this year’s Glastonbury Festival?
It’s incredible. I’m over the moon to be performing this year and on top of that, bringing the show. For The Love of Mary is such an important conversation to have, and to be able to share it on this amazing platform feels like an incredible privilege and I’m very grateful to be able to bring all of these stories that are interwoven with my own. Of all the places that I’ve taken the Virgin Mary, this is definitely up there. I do love an adventure and this feels like such a huge one. It’s exciting.
What can you tell us about your plans for the show?
I’m bringing a stripped-back version of the show. That is, without visuals or lighting. The soundtrack is gorgeous and such an important and integral part of the show. You’ll get to meet loads of characters. You get to see a snippet of their world and hear their voice and their story. These are all based on the interviews that I had with women about their experiences of womanhood in Ireland. It’s quite a journey to go on
How do you approach performing at a festival like this?
I love performing at festivals, there’s such a great energy and sense of community there. But this is a new one for me because I’ve never taken a full show to a festival before and I’ve never been to Glastonbury. It’s been performed in some alternative places, but this is definitely a new one for me. I’ve been rehearsing since March. I just did a performance of it in a theatre setting on home soil in preparation. There’s nothing like the energy of a live audience.
Will you be checking out any other acts across the weekend?
Absolutely, as said, this is my first time at Glastonbury, so I will be drinking it all in. Very much looking forward to checking out the other acts in the Poetry & Words tent and also seeing St Vincent.
