Meet Cuddy. He’s getting ready to tell his story. A story of playgrounds and fantastic islands. A story of a blueberry blue boy playing a game where life meets death in a single heartbeat. Conceived on a children’s ward, Heartbreak Soup lets children and adults peak into a world where every waking day is special.
To enter the world of a child undergoing transplant surgery is to visit the edge of the world, where life meets death and health means waiting for a gift that may come months down the line. A child can be assessed, diagnosed, and placed on the transplant list in a matter of days. Families travel from far and away to set up camp on the hospital ward for what is an impossibly uncertain length of time. Jobs and relatives are thrown into an impossible limbo. The complexity of family relationships is heightened, with the child at the centre, baring the weight of everyone’s anxiety on their tiny shoulders. Living takes a back seat to the waiting game that is forced upon them all.
3 years ago The Empty Space began working with the extraordinary staff and patients in the paediatric cardiothoracic units at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital. The initial aim was to create a piece of theatre that would capture some of the reality of life in this special, hidden world; to offer some answers to the questions asked by young patients both in anticipation of surgery and in recovery; and to help children, still piecing the universe together, to make sense of having another child’s heart beating in their chest.
The result was Heartbreak Soup, a play for children aged 8 and over in which one boy with a hole in his heart tells the story of his life, the bits he wants to keep, and the bits he’d rather forget.
“Warms and lifts up your heart like a hot-air balloon” – The Guardian
The show was a huge critical success, winning 5* reviews, Guardian ‘pick of the day’, and Writer and Director Laura Lindow was short listed for both a Total Theatre Award and Journal Culture Club writer of the year. Much more importantly though it had a significant impact on the staff at the Freeman Hospital and on the children whose stories had informed its creation. The child psychologist at the Freeman and the young people with whom we consulted were unanimous in their conviction that Heartbreak Soup’s combination of honesty and insight with humour and accessibility make it the perfect tool with which to address one major problem faced by all young heart patients – the isolation caused by other young people’s lack of understanding of their experience.
We are now in a position to tour Heartbreak Soup in May and June 2011 and we are determined that this opportunity be used to help young heart patients and their classmates develop a fair understanding of what it means, what it feels like to live with congenital heart disease.
Your donation will help to enable 5 young heart patients and their classmates to attend a performance of Heartbreak Soup. Help us to make this happen and tackle the isolation that these young people feel.
The production will be touring to the following venues:
• Salisbury International Arts Festival, Salisbury
• Dance City, Newcastle upon Tyne
• ARC, Stockton
• Maltings Theatre, Berwick upon Tweed
• Tristan Bates Theatre, London
• The Carriageworks, Leeds
• Whitby Hall, Ellesmere Port
If you want your donation to go to a child (or children) in a specific area then please contact me at hannah@theemptyspace.org.uk and I will be happy to make sure this happens.
With thanks to the Freeman Hospital and the Children's Heart Federation.
