Writer: Amy Lever
Director: Giulia Grillo
Creative Producer: PJ Cunningham
Dramaturg & Associate Director: Lauren Ellis-Stretch
Most people know there are pros and cons to using To Do lists. On the one hand it can be satisfying to cross items off a list when they’ve been completed; on the other, even slightly more complicated tasks don’t really lend themselves to being a single line on a daily or weekly list.
Nevertheless there are plenty of people who find comfort in the self-organisation offered by compiling, working through and then destroying short-term lists. Amy Lever has been one such person. In this solo show she explores how her list-making was at the centre of her formidable system of self-management, itself the product of her deep-rooted, almost obsessive, drive to succeed.
Winding things back to childhood, Amy relates an episode that was particularly traumatic for her; failing her ‘eleven-plus’ exam. While many people of earlier generations have reflected on both their successes and failures at this test – designed to cream off the more academically gifted to grammar schools, regardless of their class or family background, and consign the rest to uninspiring ‘secondary moderns’ – there are relatively few parts of England that still do this kind of thing. It seems especially anachronistic to hear Amy, very much a member of ‘Gen Z’, looking back on the eleven-plus as a seminal event in her life. But there it is.
And while that experience becomes a prime motivator as Amy negotiates her way through adolescence – she vows never to fail again – it becomes more and more apparent that her intensity, drive and focus has both an upside and a downside.
She passes the entrance exam to follow her dad and her brother in going to Cambridge. She starts to achieve success as a writer, winning the university’s playwriting prize. Then just as things are going so well she suffers an unexpected bereavement. Suddenly Amy is questioning what’s important to her and why she’s arranged her life in such a regimented way. It becomes obvious that she hasn’t left enough room for spontaneity, relaxation and actually enjoying life.
Many people, especially other creatives, will relate to Amy’s well-told story and her powerful performance. She isn’t decrying ambition as a bad thing but suggesting that the push for productivity needs to be balanced with other, sometimes contradictory, needs and drives. After the show she gives out badges, some of which show a To Do list with items crossed out, leaving only the instruction ‘have fun???’
This is an unusually mature message from someone in their mid-twenties. Hopefully Amy’s experiences now will save her the heartache of a mid-life crisis later.
Runs until 31 August 2026 (not 17 or 26) | Image: Contributed
