Today we speak to Victoria Melody, an award winning British artist who is also works in theatre and stand up. In 2022, she had a very successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe with the show Head Set which she is now taking on tour around the United Kingdom with a new updated show to reflect recent life changes. The show is touring from now until the 3rd of November and is going to many venues including Harrogate Theatre (7th October), The Old Woolen Leeds (12th October) and South Street Reading (3rd November) to name a few and you can see the whole list of locations here. I spoke to Victoria to find out all about it.

Hello Victoria, how are you? Tell us a little bit about yourself for those who are not familiar with who you are?

Hello, I’m feeling excited! I just picked up my micro campervan that I’m about to go on tour in.

For those who are not familiar with me, one newspaper called me the ‘theatrical Louis Theroux’ and obviously I was very flattered. But it’s a useful way to describe what I do. I make and perform theatre about Britain’s Enthusiasts. I am passionate about other people’s passions. I embed myself into communities for a really long time, usually around 4 years. I learn behaviors, rituals and skills that are completely outside of my realm of experience. Then I make shows about the world I’ve been embedded in, and the people I’ve met.

In the past I’ve become a pigeon fancier, a northern soul dancer, a beauty queen, I was Mrs Brighton in 2011, I’ve been a championship dog handler, I’ve been a police officer (but that was a bit illegal) and I’ve been a funeral director. 

You are going on tour with your show! What can you tell us about it? 

Sufficiently disillusioned with my theatre career, I turned to my Plan B, stand-up comedy. However, in my search to find creative freedom, I found constraints and rules that I struggled to fit myself into. Keen to succeed, I found a speech and language specialist who, at the grand old age of 40, diagnosed me as neurodivergent. Cue a hyper-focused dive into dopamine mining, teaming up with a neuroscientist and performing with a Faraday cage on my head to explore the potential of stand-up as self-medication for ADHD.  

Head Set is the chronicle of my journey, a bonkers, hilarious and galvanizing celebration of becoming your authentic self. 

You performed the show at 2022’s Edinburgh Fringe – what has changed in the show since you last performed it?

I have been re-writing Head Set ready for its Autumn tour, and there’re a few reasons why. It’s important to keep evolving your work. My theatre shows and stand-up are autobiographical and sometimes… life changes. I’m not the same person as I was when I was performing this show in Edinburgh last year. Some major changes have occurred. Of course, art can be fiction and I definitely embellish and play with chronological order in my work, but my story has changed so majorly that it would be disingenuous to not honour that. 

Another reason to change it up is the opportunity to work with new people. Bryony Kimmings has come onboard to help with re-writes, she makes incredible theatre and is mega successful. As we are both bold performance artists that make autobiographical work, we have been compared to each other in the past. I remember one newspaper review that openly pitted the two of us against one another! In collaborating on Head Set, mine and Bryony’s brains fizzed, both our ADHD neurons firing, and our imaginations and her strong logic in story structure collided and BANG, our brains converge and we made something more beautiful than we could have made by ourselves. Head Set is so so so much better now! 

What are your essential items that you are taking with you?

This time I’m in a campervan, it’s small and it will also house the theatre set overnight so my usual giant suitcase will be edited down to the minimal. My essentials are baby wipes and my super soft feather pillow, as driving, unloading, tech and rehearsing can take it out of you on tour, so it’s important to rest before the show! Slippers for walking around the venue as I’m on my feet all day (apart from when napping) and I will be taking my full skincare routine, because I want to feel good on stage. I am not taking my gym kit because I always have good intentions that fail miserably!

What is your favourite thing about touring? 

Connecting with audiences and meeting new people. I don’t get much time to look around the town or city I’m performing in and so it’s all about the people for me.

What’s the most challenging?

Oh gosh when I feel like I didn’t connect with the audience. It doesn’t happen much these days but it’s awful when I walk off stage feeling like I didn’t do my best. You always remember your bad gigs!

How do you wind down from a show? 

A lot of people in the “biz” have got gut issues from living on takeaways after shows and alcohol issues because there’s always drinks in the bar afterwards. These days I only allow myself one G&T post show and I try and have a healthy late lunch. I then usually go back to the hotel and watch some absolute trash TV like Below Deck to try and switch my buzzing brain off.

If people want to find out more, where can they visit on social media? 

Twitter: @victoriamelody

Instagram: @victoriamelody_

TikTok: @thevictoriamelody

Finally, what else can we expect from you in 2024? 

I’m working on a new project with comedian Mark Thomas about English Civil War Society Re-enactors. I started embedding myself this summer and I became a musketeer. It’s going to be an epic show I can’t wait to share it with you all.