Following its 2016 premiere, Bryony Kimmings’ innovative musical, A Pacifist’s Guide To The War On Cancer, hits the road again this year, fully reimagined for a brief UK tour, with Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre its only Midlands date. We spoke to Kimmings about the revamped version of the show and her unusual treatment of its subject matter. 

We’ve all heard the story: Character X lives an unremarkable life until disaster strikes in the form of a cancer diagnosis. What follows will be either a tragic tale of hopeless struggle and death, designed to milk our tear ducts for all they’re worth, or a life-affirming, ‘inspirational’ story of unexpected triumph in the face of adversity. Either way, it’s going to be an epic struggle - a sort of good (healthy) vs bad (sick) battle to the end - and one that will come to define the patient at its heart.

Despite the prevalence of narratives around cancer in the media, there’s a kind of shallow homogeneity to most. But Bryony Kimmings doesn’t think things have to be this way. Having previously developed shows themed around depression, STIs and childhood sexualisation, she’s no stranger to tearing up taboos around tough topics, and this play is no exception. Today, cancer may be everywhere in every sense, but the frankness that A Pacifist’s Guide To The War On Cancer promises still feels surprisingly rare and refreshing. 

“Everything you usually hear about cancer is like, ‘We must fight it,’ or ‘We must smash it to bits,’” says Kimmings. “And I just felt like, well, not only do I not believe in war, I also don’t believe that if you get breast cancer, it’s possible for you to just punch yourself in the t**s. It’s your own body and you can’t fight yourself, so I started asking where that language comes from and how it affects people. And then what happens when we don’t talk about it like that.”

The initial idea for the show came out of a meeting with theatre company Complicite, who had invited her to pitch them some ideas. Producer Judith Dimant seemed disinterested in her proposals - until Kimmings made the bold move of asking if she’d like to make a show about her illness. 

“She had a bald head and was flinching every time I coughed anywhere near her, so eventually I just said, ‘Do you have cancer?’ And she was like, ‘Oh my God, nobody’s actually asked me that before.’ Everyone had just been skirting round it until then.”

Such polite silence around sickness is not unusual. Even when we do address the issue, it’s often with platitudes that tend to shut down dialogue and preclude the possibility that things might not be okay - something that only becomes more pronounced after the experience ends. 

“I think that thing of battling and fighting and winning or losing doesn’t give space for the fact that you change and become a different person. Nobody ever acknowledges that post-cancer you’re kind of a wreck - like you lose your breasts or your relationship breaks down or whatever. People are just like, ‘You don’t have cancer anymore, you can stop talking about it.’

“Obviously you can’t cure cancer with a theatre show, but you can certainly have an honest, open dialogue about it instead of one which is like, ‘You’ll be fine.’ That just ends the conversation: you’re saying that for you to feel okay about it, I as the person with cancer just have to be quiet.”

Around seven different stories from real-life patients have made it into the show, including that of the producer who inspired it. Among them is Lara Veitch - the production’s only patient-performer - who has the extremely rare condition LFS (Li-Fraumeni Syndrome), meaning she has no tumour suppressant genes. Still in her 20s, she’s already had six different kinds of cancer, making her one of the most invaluable contributors to the ‘guide’, and is jokingly described by Kimmings as ‘Super Cancer Girl’. 

During the original run, neither Veitch nor Kimmings actually featured in the show - one undergoing another round of cancer treatment, the other looking after her severely ill son, an intense and terrifying period during which the two ended up bonding. This time, their joint appearance will change the on-stage dynamic, making the show, in Kimmings’ own words, much more truthful. Meanwhile, most other stories were picked out for their broader political resonance. 

“I think people should do cancer however they want, but that ‘I’m a survivor’ narrative is something we hear all the time, so I was much more interested in people who were like, ‘Cancer’s s**t, I can’t afford it,’ or ‘Cancer’s s**t because in the black community nobody talks about it.’ There’s also Jenny, whose husband left her during her breast cancer treatment, because, of course, misogyny doesn’t stop when you get ill. If anything it gets worse. 

“There are so many different representations. Middle-class cancer is different to working-class cancer. People-with-no-friends cancer is different to cancer for people with family around them. One of my favourite scenes at the moment is when Gia, this really poor black woman from Detroit who’s only being treated because she’s on a trial, walks in on five white women sharing their problems and is like, ‘Let me give you some perspective on what cancer’s really like.”

All this might sound a little doom and gloom, but in its way, it’s actually oddly uplifting. Featuring colourful tumours and musical numbers ranging from slow ballads to disco floor-fillers, it aims to have audiences laughing and singing along. More importantly, it affords both characters and viewers the freedom to be normal human beings. As Kimmings’ co-writer, Brian Lobel, rather brilliantly says in talks to cancer patients, ‘I hope you’re as mediocre at the end of this experience as you were at the beginning’. 

A Pacifist’s Guide To The War On Cancer shows at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, from Wednesday 14 to Saturday 17 February.