Katie Overstall and Nell Thomas on Around The World With Nellie Bly
From the Edinburgh Fringe to the Waterloo VAULT Festival, via a trip round the world, performer Katie Overstall has joined her character Nellie Bly on a massive adventure this year. We were delighted therefore when Katie, along with director Nell Thomas, found five minutes to tell ET about this fascinating explorer and what to expect from Shedlight Stories‘ Around The World With Nellie Bly
Well, we’ve all heard of Phileas Fogg and his trip round the world in eighty days, but Nellie Bly is less well-known. Was she a real person, and what trip did she undertake exactly?
KATIE: She was a real person! Nellie Bly was a journalist, living in New York in the late 1800s. Nowadays we’d call her an investigative journalist – she wrote all sorts of incredible stories, often putting herself in harm’s way to do so.
NELL: In our show we focus on just one of her stories; her solo journey around the world, which was inspired by Jules Verne’s book published about 20 years beforehand.
After convincing her male editors that she was more than capable of undertaking the journey alone as a young woman, she attempted to beat Phileas Fogg’s fictional record and make it from New York all around the whole world and back to New York in less than 80 days.
Taking a similar route as Fogg in the book, she travelled across the Atlantic, through Europe, Africa, and Asia, across the Pacific and across the United States via trains and ships. Not an easy journey in the 19th century!
She had to deal with ocean storms, snow storms, delays, and even a competing journalist attempting the same thing in the opposite direction. She visited some incredible places and met a whole host of people along the way (all played wonderfully in our show by Katie) and even got to meet Jules Verne himself.
You wrote the show yourself: why did you choose to tell Nellie’s story, and why for a young audience?
KATIE: Nell brought Nellie’s story to me, and I thought it was fantastic – bursting with theatrical promise. I loved that it was a story about a young woman standing up for herself and testing her own limits. I also really love that she started her journey just to see if it was possible. She had a magnificent sense of curiosity.
NELL: I had come across Nellie by chance and the more I read about her, the more I knew I wanted to make a show about her. Katie and I have worked together quite a lot in the past and we love finding fun and imaginative ways to tell stories and this seemed like it would be the perfect fit. There was the opportunity for adventure, jeopardy, lots of silly characters, and even a monkey! It became pretty clear early on in the process that this would be for a younger audience.
KATIE: The story presented the opportunity to tell an adventure story that isn’t just for boys, and hopefully we will be able to encourage kids of any gender to be curious and adventurous.
NELL: I’ve seen studies that show that around the age of eight girls become less confident and lose interest in things they were previously invested in because they are considered activities or subjects for boys, so I really wanted to pitch it at that age range and hone in on the themes of self-confidence, self-reliance, and self-belief, and not letting others tell you that something you’re interested in isn’t for you just because of your gender.
What kind of person is Nellie?
KATIE: She’s bold and determined and very practical. She looks for the good in everyone and doesn’t put up with gossip or cruelty. She can be rather stubborn and single-minded though, but she usually admits when she’s wrong eventually!
Can you tell us a bit about the puppet characters?
NELL: We have a few, but our main puppet is a monkey (a long-tailed macaque to be more precise) called McGinty. He is based on the real monkey that Nellie adopted in Singapore on her trip and brought home with her to New York.
Once we decided we were going to aim the show at kids we knew that we had to include him in our story. Throughout the development of the show he became an integral part of it and essentially becomes Nellie’s best friend, her confidant, and even the voice of reason on occasion (even though he is non-verbal).
He is a fantastic puppet made by Shaun Lati, and is designed to be able to be puppeteered by one hand, allowing Katie to keep him moving while doing the million other things that need to be done in the show simultaneously!
KATIE: Also he’s really cute.
NELL: Yes, he’s been a very big hit with the kids. Big and small!
Do you also use original music and sound in the production?
NELL: One of the first things we discussed when developing the show was that it should be easy to travel. Like the real Nellie, we travel very light, there are no big set or tech requirements, so we rely a lot on sound to set the scene.
We originally worked with a sound designer called Joe Hewitt who helped us through our R&D and then with Julian Starr who completed the sound design with wonderful music and a soundscape to really create the atmosphere of the play. It becomes a great shorthand to show where we are in the world at any given point and when there is danger or jeopardy, and we obviously do a lot of travelling in the story, so there are a lot of train and boat noises required to give a sense of motion.
We also worked with a few other actors to build up some of the soundscape and add some additional voices in. Katie plays so many different characters that it’s nice to give her a bit of a break!
Why do you think Nellie’s true story is not as famous as that of the fictional character of Fogg?
KATIE: At the time, her journey was making national headlines daily and was a hugely popular story in America. On the last legs of her trip, crowds would be waiting at every train station she passed through in order to see her. She even wrote a book about her journey, but I suppose it’s hard to compete with an already famous author like Jules Verne, and history does have a tendency to overlook women…
NELL: This year marks 150 years since the publication of the novel Around the World in 80 Days, and you just have to look at how many adaptations of the story there have been in that time to see that there is something about the tale that people love. I just don’t think they have been given the opportunity to learn that a woman actually attempted this feat in real life. I hope that our show goes a little way towards people recognising that this didn’t just happen in fiction.
You were at Edinburgh this summer in the sunshine – are you bracing yourself for winter at the Vaults, or will Nellie’s resilience see you both through a residence at the dank cellars?
KATIE: Honestly, I’m kind of looking forward to it. My costume is quite a heavy Victorian style dress – very beautifully made, but very hot! In the summer sun it was a bit much, so maybe a dank cellar is just what I need!
Thanks very much to Katie and Nell for this fascinating insight into a true life inspiration. Around the World with Nellie Bly is aimed at families and children age 6+ and runs at the Vaults from Saturday 28 January to Sunday 5 February
