00:00lovely good afternoon my name is phil hewitt group arts editor from sussex newspapers really lovely
00:06to speak to alice o handman who's bringing extraordinary sounding new play to the nest
00:12the new volume a new venue at chichester festival theatre bring it in august as part of the artist
00:17development program and this is an incredibly personal story isn't it that you tell all based
00:23on your own experiences set the scene yes it's inspired by my relationship with my dad
00:31who was diagnosed with early onset alzheimer's disease when he was 55 and the story is through
00:37the lens of charlie a young adult who is sort of learning to navigate her father's diagnosis and
00:45the highs and lows that that come with that um especially as a young person who who might not
00:52have people her age her peers going through a similar thing um and it's sort of a story of of
00:58um acceptance in a way and um of um there being no right and wrong way to to love somebody in that
01:07situation that all you can do is be there and and right away unless it's a really stupid thing to say
01:13a really brave thing to explore this in a public way i mean you could internalize everything as we
01:19were saying but you want to show that story why why do you want to show the story i think that i would
01:25have loved to have seen a young person um speaking out about their experience um and i i think it's
01:35just important you know i think less so nowadays but i do think that dementia can be quite a taboo
01:40subject um and i think it's important that that the more we talk about it and the more it becomes
01:46spoken about the the more dementia friendly our our society will be and i think it's quite
01:51important that we that we're moving towards that because we're desperately trying to find a cure but
01:57also there's other things we can be doing too and that's learning about it and learning how to
02:02support somebody and love somebody that's living with it absolutely so you need this this performance
02:08in chichester to make its mark and go on and you're confident quietly confident it will aren't you
02:14yeah i hope i hope we can keep telling this story um and i hope that it resonates with people and
02:20i i have no doubt that there will be people who come to watch whose experience with dementia is totally
02:26different and that they might have a bit of a reaction that that's like oh that's not what happened to me
02:31but i think that all of those reactions are important because it's about sparking conversation
02:36isn't it absolutely yeah that's what i want to do i just want to get people talking um more
02:42well congratulations on it sounds brilliant quite apart from the fact that you have the honor of being
02:47one of the first few people into the nest so congratulations and really yes to speak to you again
02:52thank you thank you too thank you thank you
02:55thank you
Comments