Belly Scratch

Belly Scratch is Underbelly Boulevard Soho’s first ever theatre scratch night!

Discover exciting and bold new pieces in their early stages, from both new and established theatre-makers! We’re providing a regular safe space for theatre-makers to test out never-performed extracts of their work and receive feedback from a receptive audience. Belly Scratch nights will feature 4 artists each performing or reading up to 20 minutes of a new piece of work, and audience members will have access to a feedback form after watching, providing an opportunity to offer new ideas and thoughts on the work and influence its future direction.

Come along and take your place at the forefront of new, innovative theatre, and stick around in the bar afterwards to meet and mingle with the artists and your fellow audience members!

Extracts from the following pieces will be performed on the 26th of March:

Feral Ingenue
Sadbh is determined to be the best wife ever.
She hasn’t left the house in a year.
She’s very dedicated.

Her fella is ridiculously handsome.
He’s just her type.
Old-fashioned, dashing, and easy to control.||She’s very happy to cordially invite you to their anniversary party.
Let’s celebrate this couple, and their very special bond.

Bio:
Aoife Cassidy (she/they)
Actor & writer Aoife graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in BA (Hons) Acting (Collaborative and Devised Theatre), where they studied from 2021-2024. She won the Lilian Baylis Award at the Old Vic in 2023 and is a recipient of the Nellie Watson Scholarship. She was offered a place at the University of Cambridge for English Literature in 2021. She’s worked with Nicole Charles, Neil Bartlett and Pan Pan Theatre Company. They’ve been a contributing writer to multiple productions by way of being a devising actor, collaborating with The PappyShow, Emily Aboud, Tom Creed, and Tonderai Munyevo. She recently acted in The 24 Hour Plays.

JAM: Rules and Assumptions for Living 
‘Settle down, settle down please! Bums on seats and listening ears!’ 

It’s Monday morning in Miss K’s Class.  

Nathan is late, Michael has spilt Bolognese on his uniform and Aliyah’s in trouble for talking.  

Today, Bridget is doing something different. She’s in a different class, with an intimidatingly tall tower of bread and a long list of instructions. Miss K is getting impatient. Some might say she’s losing control. 

Oh Bridget… Was it spread the Jam on butter, or was it butter then Jam? Did Miss K say triangle halves or square halves? Things are moving too fast and it’s all getting rather sticky.  

JAM uses clowning, slapstick humour and copious amounts of gelatinous substances. It’s rooted in pedagogical research, and the educational trends and controversies of the last two decades. Ella (a former teacher), and Bridget (a former child), and the audience (also former children) form the characters of our classroom. JAM is about being very angry about the way we were meant to feel when we were twelve, being incredibly joyous about life now, and radically rethinking how we talk to kids who learn differently.  

Bio: 
Ella Kennedy and Bridget Russon are performance artists and producers who met at Goldsmiths University three years ago and have been working together ever since. Together, they produce and MC East London cabaret Things That Go Eeek. An experimental performance night that platforms early career artists and gives more established professionals space to try new material. The producing duo also provide artists with mentoring opportunities with industry professionals and advocate for a more inclusive, feminist alternative comedy scene. They are also part of collectivebreak, an international performance art collective who have performed with Camden People’s Theatre and as part of OUTNOW! Festival In Bremen, Germany.

JAM was conceived in Ella’s kitchen as a scheme to spend even more time together and is an evolving love letter to weird and wonderful brains. 

The Leftovers (and now what?)
Starting with leftovers, this is a story about a family who barely speaks, until suddenly they say too much. 

Xian, the rebellious sister, flies back to China to visit her family with a big mission to come out and admit to the life she’s built in London. 

Jiahao, her teenage brother and a model rule-follower, is determined to write the perfect love letter before his best friend (and secret crush) moves to Canada. 
Their mother, Ma, tough but well-meaning, is holding the secret of grandma’s diagnosis to herself. She believes everything will be fine, as long as they can make it to the New Year. 

As the countdown begins, tensions build over the dinner table, and long-buried truths start to unravel. 

Centred around identity, generation differences and social expectations, The Leftovers (and now what?) discusses the complexities of family love, and what holds us together underneath all the chaos. 

Bio 
Writer / Producer: Peijia Hu is a Chinese writer, producer and theatre maker, with a background in media studies and photography. Her practice explores migration, identity and collective memory, with a special interest in East and Southeast Asian communities and the vision of engaging social conversations by telling stories that resonate. Her latest writing, producing, and devising projects have been seen at Bold Elephant, A Pinch of Vault, Etcetera Theatre, and Almeida Theatre. Currently she works as Producing and Touring Trainee at Sadler’s Wells, supporting the logistics and delivery of world-class dance productions across the globe. 

Director: Valerie Mo is a freelance queer Chinese theatre director and dramaturg based in London. Her passion lies in storytelling-based works that explore womanhood, intimate relationships, and cultural identities. She has featured in Act II Springboard Festival 2024 as one of the 15 selected young director and has directing and assistant directing experience at Soho Theatre, Seven Dials Playhouse, Cockpit Theatre, The Space, The Pleasance Theatre, and East 15 Acting School. 

Bread and Circuses
Bread and Circuses is Julius Caesar’s newly unearthed TED talk on leadership mindset.

Bio:
Seamus Lavan is an actor, theatre-maker, and fool. He creates solo theatre work as well as collaborative pieces with his company BRILLIG.