We Should Definitely Have More Dancing

Clara Darcy is an actor who loves to dance. She has also been living with headaches for months, and when her mum finally takes her to A&E in Manchester, a scan shows why: a rare tumour the size of a fist, sitting in the middle of her head. Within a week she is listening to her surgeon list everything that could go wrong.

Clara plays herself in this true story, and we join her in a Manchester radio studio as she records it, with her producer and co-writer listening in from the control room. Her story takes her from the ward at Salford Royal, through surgery that goes in through her nose, to a slow recovery at her parents’ house, with her mum and sisters never far away. She would rather keep things light, and she is very funny about the indignities of hospital life. Her co-writer, the playwright Ian Kershaw, thinks the play isn’t finished until she says how it really felt. The result is a big-hearted play about being alive, and a good argument that we should definitely have more dancing.

The play was first staged at Oldham Coliseum in 2022, before a national tour and the Coliseum’s first ever Edinburgh Fringe run.

Clara . . . . . Clara Darcy
Mum . . . . . Suzanna Hamilton
Laura . . . . . Shamia Chalabi
Omar . . . . . Esh Alladi
Oncologist . . . . . Rupert Hill
Kersh . . . . . Ian Kershaw
Gary . . . . . Gary Brown
Sue . . . . . Sue Stonestreet

Production Co-ordinators: Vicky Moseley and Lorna Newman
Studio Manager: Simon Highfield
Sound Design: Sue Stonestreet
Director/Producer: Gary Brown