Sheffield actor explores brain injury in autobiographical show Subdural Hematoma coming to Rotherham Civic Theatre

Eleanor May Blackburn was just hitting her stride as an ambitious acting student when, only two months into university, she suddenly suffered a brain injury that could have wiped out her dream of performing forever.

It simultaneously feels like a lifetime ago and only yesterday, says the Sheffield woman of 25, that she was in hospital after a cyclist crashed into her and when her parents had to “prepare for the worst”, when she was induced into a two-week coma and when she had to learn how to walk, talk and write again. But it was actually nearly seven years ago. Enough time has since passed that she has not only made an remarkable recovery, but developed a highly personal show, Subdural Hematoma, one which she will perform at the Rotherham Civic Theatre on Wednesday next week.

The way Eleanor describes it now, it is as though a life-threatening brain injury was never going to stop her from pursuing her career.

After starting her acting course at Falmouth University in September 2015 and sustaining her injury in the November, she was placed with the specialist brain injury team at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth before an air ambulance brought her home to Sheffield in time for Christmas that year, staying in Royal Hallamshire Hospital until January 2016.

Speaking last month from the Edinburgh Fringe, where she was performing in the show Apartness, she says: “I was still obsessed with going back to university. I said constantly, ‘I really want to finish what I started’ and the people at the brain injury unit were like, ‘We don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go back to uni. We think you should recover for longer and get better at home’. And I was like, ‘No, I’m doing this’. I’m very stubborn, extremely stubborn. And yeah, I was like, ‘I’m going to do it. I’m going to go back in September’.

And that’s exactly what she did.

“I graduated with a first, so I’m really glad that I went back so quick,” says Eleanor, from Chapeltown.

Her resolve was understandable, given how long she has wanted to act.

“When I was little, I would always dress up and put on a show for my mum and dad and my cousins. We’d charge 50p entrance and we’d do snacks of sliced apple and put them in little bowls. I always made myself the main character – I don’t know if that’s a good thing, but I did it anyway – and we put on Oliver and we made loads of plays called the Mean Queen. And of course, I was mean queen. I’ve always wanted to do it.”

Her recovery was not easy, of course, as she initially had to communicate by typing on a machine and fatigue was a factor on her return to university.

“They had a space for me in the library in the performing arts building where I had a comfy chair and blankets and pillows, and anytime that I was feeling too tired or anything like that, I could just say ‘I’m going for 20 minutes’ in my lesson and I’d just go and curl up in this chair and have a sleep but, yeah, it was difficult.”

It was at university that Eleanor, who works as an actor at the York Dungeon, started to develop Subdural Hematoma during what was called a ‘Show in a Bag’ module.

“It was basically a show that you could take anywhere, do anytime, just set up and put it on. I didn’t really want to talk about it (the injury) at first but I was challenged by one of my fantastic lecturers, Dr Misri Dey, to put on something funny. I made a spoken word about it and people laughed and I was like, ‘Oh, this actually feels really nice’. And it was really, quite selfishly I suppose, a form of therapy for me. It helped me put to bed the accident.”

The show people will see in Rotherham on Wednesday is much developed from the original but the premise is that Eleanor responds in the piece to recorded diary entries made by her mother, Lucy, written at the time of her injury. Recordings of her father, Simon, also feature – of excerpts from books he read to her in hospital – and Eleanor also reached out to other actors with brain injuries, Monty Lloyd and Sapir Hadas, who respond to her questions. In all, it is a spoken word piece with factual audio recordings, physical theatre and verbatim material that shows how someone can make a comeback from the darkest of times and still be able to laugh about it.

An old friend of Eleanor’s, Jack Victor Price, from Rotherham, is the director.

“I think the main takeaway from my piece is that it isn’t just my story,” says Eleanor.

“It’s the story of my mum and my dad, the story of these other people and I don’t think it’s a solo show as such any more because it just takes into account multiple people’s journeys.”

At times it has been an exhausting process for Eleanor personally, though.

“When I first made the piece at uni, I cried for like three days straight because I was just so overwhelmed by emotion,” she says.

Previously, Eleanor won critical praise for the show when performing it at Manchester Fringe in 2021 and, using Art Council funding, took it to venues in Sheffield and Salford earlier this year. She was approached to open the Rotherham Civic’s autumn season with the 60-minute Subdural Hematoma, which she describes as an “amazing” opportunity, after getting involved with the town’s Break Out Arts group.

She has set her sights on other artistic pursuits, though. Last October, after starting to write during lockdown, she released a book of poetry called Ghost and Found, which in addition to tackling her accident also explores what young people might go through, such as love or academic issues.

At the Edinburgh Fringe last month, Eleanor appeared live alongside filmed scenes by actors Sylvester McCoy and Linda Marlowe in Kevin Short’s Apartness, a multi-media comedy drama.

He had also cast Eleanor as a lead in his Bonnie & Clive feature film about a road trip, for which they filmed at locations including Land’s End, Stonehenge and London.

Now, Eleanor wants to encourage anyone who goes through extreme trauma to write about their experience.

“If you don’t show it to anyone, that’s absolutely fine but I think everyone should write about what they’ve been through,” she says.

“I think writing is just such a cathartic exercise.

“And it’s a really fantastic form of therapy, and I think writing about anything you go through is really important. I know, not everyone feels like they are a writer but you don’t have to be. Or you can be a writer, but just writing a few sentences. There are no rules for what a writer is.”

Tickets for Subdural Hematoma cost £8 (£6 for concessions), with ‘Pay What You Can’ tickets also available for those that may not otherwise be able to visit the theatre. They are available to buy online at www.rotherhamtheatres.co.uk or from the box office at the entrance of Rotherham Civic Theatre. Recommended for ages 16 and over.