Interview: Deaf actress Katie Erich on ‘The Solid Life of Sugar Water’ at the Orange Tree Theatre

Ahead of the press night for The Solid Life of Sugar Water this evening, The Limping Chicken’s Liam O’Dell sat down with co-star Katie Erich to discuss Jack Thorne’s critically acclaimed play and Deaf representation.

“First, it’s Jack Thorne and I love Jack Thorne’s writing,” Katie tells me when I ask her what drew her towards her latest acting job. “I also think it’s a really important story. When we were looking at like statistics and stuff, it’s something like one in 200 people will experience stillbirth, which is terrifying. Also, it feels like a story that needs to be told.”

Thorne – known for his TV adaptation of Phillip Pulman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, Channel 4’s This Is England miniseries and his work on the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play – frequently champions disabled voices in his work. Last year saw him deliver the famous McTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival on the subject of improving the recruitment of disabled talent in the TV industry.

It’s no different in the world of theatre, and in the Orange Tree’s revival of The Solid Life of Sugar Water – which had a run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2015 with the disability theatre company Graeae – Katie is joined by neurodivergent actor Adam Fenton.

Respectively, they play couple Alice and Phil, who are navigating the trauma of having a stillborn child.

Rehearsals, Katie says, have been going great. “The Orange Tree have been wonderful in making sure that everything is accessible as possible. So there was interpreters in the room at all times,” beams Katie. “Adam Fenton – who I’m working with – is another disabled neurodiverse actor, so we’ve both got similar access requirements in some ways, but different in other ways.

“We had access meetings with the company stage manager beforehand, and we all discussed access our director, Indiana [Lown-Collins], she’s also disabled. So it was kind of a very open space, we could talk about what we needed,” she continues. “We could openly discuss things and we’d always check in and check out at the end of the day, like if you haven’t a day of ‘I can’t listen to anything anymore, I have full-on Deaf fatigue, I want to take my hearing aids out and go to bed’, we could discuss that and that was fine, which feels really nice and very supportive.”

The production doesn’t look the same as the 2016 National Theatre staging, however. “They were like a normal proscenium stage, bed upright. The Orange Tree’s in the round, so that’s a massive difference – we can’t have a standing up bed,” Katie laughs. “We all knew with the show beforehand, and we knew that of the life that it had, but none of us had seen it before. I think that’s kind of allowed us to be ourselves. It’s a revival, not a copy, because that’s been really freeing as an actor, to not have to worry about doing it the way someone else did it before.

“It also feels really nice to know that it’s been done before and people really enjoyed the show, and to see what kind of like Genevieve Barr and Arthur [Hughes] is now doing is great,” she adds. “I think it’s a really beautiful story, so I’m really glad it’s got a revival seven years later.”

I ask Katie more about Deaf actors, and the growing trend in the visibility of Deaf people in the creative industries, such as TV and theatre. “I think I came into the industry, luckily, at a time when steps had already been taken,” she said. “I only started working fresh in 2020, and I am so grateful to the Deaf and disabled actors who have lforged the way before me.

“Sometimes, I think we’re at a point where often people use Deaf and disabled [people] as like a token,” Katie continues, “but I feel like we need to get through that step, and show people that we can act or we can do whatever, regardless of Deaf and disability and background and everything else.

“I feel like we need to demonstrate what we can do before it’s just normal,” she says, before listing some examples. “I mean there’s people like Nadeem Islam at the National Theatre, Amy Forrest at the National Theatre, Rose [Ayling-Ellis on] EastEnders and Strictly, we’re getting seen and I’m really excited.

“I feel really lucky that I am working as much as I am and I feel really lucky that I get to watch people who are training now, who were going to far surpass where I am and just go straight to the top, because Deaf people are really talented,” Katie continues. “They’ve got to be the most talented people I’ve ever met, Deaf people, they amaze me on a daily basis.”

Katie will no doubt amaze audiences herself in The Solid Life of Sugar Water, which is now playing at the Orange Tree Theatre in London until 12 November.

Every performance will include creative captions, with British Sign Language (BSL) interpreted performances will taking place on Thursday 10 November at 7:30pm and Saturday 12 November at 2:30pm.

---

Photo: Shona Louise.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is an award-winning Deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.