Hull theatre company Middle Child's new play about Victorian artist Elizabeth Thompson

Brammar says: “While I was listening to the episode, I was really drawn into the story, and I thought ‘this would make a great play. Someone should write that’. It took me another year before I came to the realisation that that someone could be me.”

Brammar was commissioned to write a play about Thompson by Hull’s Middle Child theatre company, which she duly set out to do but five years is a long time in the gestation of a new play. “I wrote a fictional play about Thompson, but actually really didn’t like the thing I’d written. After about six months of working on it being like “it’s not very good”, I threw it away,” says Brammar. “It’s one of the scariest things you can do as a writer, but also one of the most satisfying. Throwing away a whole draft is like ripping off a plaster. It feels really good.

“Then I spoke to Paul (Smith, co-director of Modest and Middle Child artistic director), and I just said, “That story about Elizabeth Thompson, could I just write her story? Could I just take her and write that story?” He, being someone who is big on risk taking, just went: ‘Yeah, go for it. Do it and see what happens.’ So, I did.”

An even bigger change was to come for the play Brammar was writing for Middle Child further down the line, but why did she feel the need to tell the artist’s real story? “Real people often aren’t what you want them to be. Their stories don’t always fit into the perfect narrative. But that’s what I loved about Elizabeth and this moment in her life. And it was just that, a moment; I only explore five years in the play,” says Brammar.

“This is where the first idea came that the Elizabeth in the play should be flawed; she doesn’t do what the modern audience would want her to do. She describes in her autobiography how she missed out getting elected into the Royal Academy, finishing with the devastating line: ‘The door has been closed. And wisely.’ Ultimately accepting their decision and agreeing with it.

“There were other lines from her autobiography that really drew me in, painting a picture of who Elizabeth could have been. One of my favourites, ‘I will single myself out’, ignited the idea that my Elizabeth would be determined and gloriously arrogant. I never wanted to write a factual piece about Elizabeth Thompson. That was really freeing, the minute that I started thinking that I don’t know the real Elizabeth and I’m never going to know the real Elizabeth, so it was great to dive into creating a completely fictional one.”

Once Brammar had the new version of Thompson’s story that she wanted to tell, that bigger shift came along when Middle Child brought in Luke Skilbeck to co-direct. Skilbeck is the director of Milk, a queer-artist led award-winning theatre and live art company. Brammar says: “I sort of always knew that there was going to be some element of drag in it, because we always knew that we were going to have to double-up casting. As I was writing it, I never thought this was a really serious piece. It had to be heightened in a way and we knew that drag would do that.

“During one of the research and development phases me and Paul had a chat and we both agreed that we needed someone who knew that craft and Luke came instantly to mind. Luke read the play and thought there’s lots in here that lends itself to queer art, to cabaret and to drag and then they came on board and then we sort of spent the next four or five drafts bringing that in. “Really, the story stayed exactly the same. It was more bringing out elements of the script to make it suit the form a bit more.”

The result is typically Middle Child, a company with an ever-growing reputation for high energy gig-theatre, fused with the drag cabaret of Milk. “I want people to see it. It’s going to be a really special show and it deserves to be seen. It’s joyful and there are moments of hope in there as well,” says Brammar.

Modest, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, June 19 - 21, Slung Low, Holbeck, Leeds, June 23.