Show development – The Bellydancing Backpacker

At the start of 2018 everyone died. Lucy left a successful career, retrained as an English teacher and moved to Egypt. Everyone thought she’d be home within weeks. This one woman show tells the highs, lows and life lessons of moving halfway across the world, as well as one very unexpected new job. Expect laughter, brutal honesty, and a ton of belly dancing in the aisles.

Warning: This show will have the Shirley Valentine effect on in-therapy millennials looking for self-inflicted instagrammable trauma.

The Team

Writer and Performer: Lucy Andrina

Director: Betty Chequers

Technical & FOH support kindly provided by the Bloomsbury Festival

Hot Trip Theatre is a newly formed theatre company. A collaboration between two women in their thirties: Betty and Lucy.

Betty Chequers is a director, teacher, musician, performer and live art creator, who has a passion for anything quirky, feral and fantastic; creating out of the box shows that always leave you questioning your sanity.

Lucy Andrina is a British performance artist, writer and belly dancer trained in Cairo, Egypt, with impulsively itchy feet; making hilarious, slightly chaotic but surprisingly poignant theatre.

How to Run Away is brought to you as part of Bloomsbury Festival 2023 through the New Wave emerging artists programme.

Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

We want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has helped in the production of this show including:

Penny & Sian at the Wick, Langport.

Ian & The Hatch

Everyone who recorded voiceovers

Eman Mahmoud

Our friends and family who’ve put up with us on our artistic journey

Lucy’s therapist, nutritionist and hypnotherapist who sorted her out.

It’s been a funny week! My flight to Egypt is booked for Tuesday. I’ve had one final week and a packed one it has been. It’s been a week of managing nerves.

I love listening to comedians talk about their experiences of getting into comedy. It’s never a smooth road, they fail A LOT and they are honest about it – which a lot of performers aren’t. My favourites are Elis James and John Robins Gig diaries – you can find them on YouTube. They’re failures when starting outweigh the successes and it’s so funny.

Sunday night was Cabaret Lab. I performed there in November (only my second live performance ever!) so I felt more comfortable going in. It takes me 2 x 2 hour sessions to learn a song without precision choreography. I did a drum solo, whacked the hair extensions in and wore the best costume I have in the UK. It was great – I was exhausted by the end but it went really well and I left feeling like I’m starting to get the hang of performing dance. And feedback was great.

Friday morning I had a meeting with the Bloomsbury Festival director to throw around initial ideas for the one woman show. And I am so excited! I submitted an Arts Council application the same day and went to see the potential venue today. I can’t say much about right now, but if it all pulls off, it should be a cracker!