2023-24: Blizzard

Blizzard

Knowledge Exchange Fellow
Professor Wes Williams   |   Medieval & Modern Languages   |   University of Oxford

Partner Organisation
Emily Woof

Blizzard is an exploration of research questions arising at the intersection of neuroscience, embodied cognition, and human/animal identity. As part of his KE Fellowship, Professor Wes Williams collaborated with Emily Woof, performer and writer, and director Hamish McColl, on the generation and production of a new solo show, premiered at the Edinburgh Festival and now set to tour.

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A scurrilous and intimate journey into love, identity and the animal in all of us…

A woman’s brain-scientist husband falls ill just as he is due to give the keynote lecture at a Swiss conference. She reluctantly agrees to give the lecture on his behalf. But when she arrives in Switzerland, her life starts to unravel. Clothes don’t want to be clothes anymore. A dress becomes reluctant to be seen in public.

Emily Woof’s comic, philosophical adventure asks what is the self, what is thinking, what is the body? And in a godless universe, how do we connect with this thing called the soul?

Emily’s landmark solo shows Sex III and Revolver (also both made in collaboration with Wes Williams) won back to back Edinburgh Fringe Firsts and were performed at Royal Court Theatre over twenty years ago. Now she is back with an intimate epic, a surreal and hilarious shaggy-dog story, about philosophy and neuroscience, dance and animals, love and the soul, which asks the question: how should we really live in body and mind?

Blizzard is directed by Hamish McColl, founder of The Right Size whose hit show The Play What I Wrote was a smash in the West End and on Broadway and whose movies as screenwriter include Paddington, Jonny English and Mr Bean’s Holiday.

Performed at Summerhall, in Edinburgh, August 2023, followed by a three-week run at the Soho Theatre in London, May 2024: https://sohotheatre.com/events/blizzard/