Seddon & Gallacher

Family break-up has, sadly, become an increasingly common occurrence and is perhaps not talked about as often as it should be. This is at the heart of a darkly comic, bold new play developed by London-based theatre company TheatreState.

Tribute Acts, which comes to Bradford’s Theatre in the Mill this week, is the brainchild of TheatreState’s co-founders Tess Seddon and Cheryl Gallacher and explores, in particular, the father-daughter relationship. Both now 29 years old, Seddon and Gallacher’s fathers left home several years ago – in Seddon’s case when she was 22 and in Gallacher’s when she was 18.

“We both grew up idolising our dads,” says Seddon who was raised and went to school in Ilkley. “It was a time of hope in the 1990s after Tony Blair was elected and both our fathers were left-wing nineties new men. Then, following the trajectory of Tony Blair, we ended up feeling a bit disillusioned with them because they both left our families and it all went wrong. So we were disappointed in our personal lives as well as in our political lives.”

For both young women their relationships with their fathers had subsequently broken down. After initial conversations about their experiences Seddon and Gallacher had the idea of interviewing their fathers and filming them with a view to creating a theatre piece. “I thought it would work best if I interviewed Cheryl’s dad and she interviewed mine because we might get more honest answers,” says Seddon. “It was interesting because a lot of their answers were very similar and I felt it said something about their generation of New Labour supporters and where they are now.”

They asked their fathers a range of questions – many of them dealing with political issues, but also about their own childhoods and relationships with their fathers, about their memories of their daughters’ childhoods and their dreams and desires for the future.

“They are both in their sixties now and reassessing what their lives have been,” says Seddon. “It was sometimes difficult for me to watch my dad’s responses because you are hoping for certain things, but there were some moments of profound understanding. The positive side of it for us was that our dads both turned up and let us grill them. It is so easy to be really angry with them for leaving – and I don’t think I will ever understand it or see it as a valid decision – but I think it’s important to talk about these things.”

Going through the process of creating the piece has allowed Seddon and Gallacher to reconnect with their fathers in a meaningful way. “My dad talked to me about how it made him feel better and I felt like I could get a lot of my chest,” says Seddon. “I think I learnt that maybe as a child it is unrealistic what you expect from a parent.”

The play itself is a combination of edited sections of the original interview footage, monologues from Seddon and Gallacher about their own experiences of childhood and montages of 90s images and music.

Tribute Acts is currently on tour and was developed with support from Theatre in the Mill, premiering at Edinburgh Festival last summer.

“I think what’s been really nice is that lots of fathers and daughters have come to watch it and found it really powerful,” says Tess Seddon. “The play seems to be really resonating with people.”

Tribute Acts is at Theatre in the Mill, Bradford on May 13. Tickets 01274 233200 www.brad.ac.uk/theatre