‘Boudica and Me: I’ll Share the Fire, But Not the Ashes’ is a deep and brash exploration of Boudica’s history and the raw reality of modern womanhood. Rebekah Wallace, following several successful work-in-progress developments, brings a fresh and updated version of the show to Colchester Fringe. We sent FringeReview’s resident interviewer Dr.Pants to ask her questions about bringing the spirit of Boudica to life. The show is on October 21-November 1st during the festival.
NAP: Hello Rebekah! Congrats on returning once again to Colchester Fringe with this show. I saw the earliest 20-minute version of this show awhile back and I’m so excited to see how far you’ve come in developing it to a full-length fringe show. Tell us for those who don’t know: what is this show about?
RW: On the surface, it’s about Boudica. The real Boudica, not the simplified symbol, not the Victorian caricature, but the woman who was flogged in public, whose daughters were violated, whose kingdom was stolen, and who still got up and burned three Roman cities to the ground. But underneath that, it’s about me. A neurodivergent, synesthetic woman who moved three thousand miles from Maine to Colchester and found herself face to face with this ancient queen in the castle museum. It’s about how Boudica’s story taught me to stop apologising for taking up space. It’s about ADHD, menopause, boundaries, and getting back up when you’d rather stay down. It’s about what happens when you make friends with your own fire, and then learn to pass it on.
NAP: What inspired you to write a show about Boudica?
RW: First: the ground. I mean that literally. In Colchester, we walk every day over the Boudican destruction layer—that layer of red and black ash and melted glass that marks where Boudica’s army burned the Roman town to the ground. Second: the connection. I’m Penobscot, First Nations. I grew up with stories of women warriors with different names, different languages, but the same fire. When I found Boudica in that museum, it wasn’t like learning history. It was like recognising an ancestor.
NAP: What if I don’t know anything about Colchester history? Will I feel lost in the material?
RW: You don’t have to know anything about Boudica. You don’t have to like history. You don’t have to be neurodivergent or menopausal or a woman or a survivor of anything. You just have to know what it feels like to be told you’re too much. Or not enough. To be talked over in a meeting. To walk home with your keys laced through your fingers. To feel like the world buried you under concrete and coffee shops, and you’re not sure if you’ll ever find your way back up.
NAP: This will be your third time performing this piece at the Colchester Fringe festival? What makes you keep wanting to come back?
RW: Because this is where it started.
Colchester isn’t just where I live, it was the Roman capital, the first city Boudica’s army burned to the ground. That’s not a detail I learned in a book. It’s the ground I walk on every day. I don’t visit this story. I don’t research it from a distance. I buy milk on top of it. I wait for the bus on top of it.
And that changes everything about how the story sits in my body. You can tell this story in other places. You can tell it in Norwich, in London, in St Albans or any of the places her story touched. But Colchester is where the rebellion started. And it’s the place I call home.So performing it here, in the city where it all began, feels like the closest thing to standing inside the story itself. It’s not a history lesson. It’s a homecoming.
NAP: You set a challenge for yourself and have actually walked the exact route Boudica walked yourself. And then, you still somehow have the energy and stamina to do this show. I would be asleep for the rest of the year. Why did you walk 79 miles from Norwich to Colchester?
RW: Because I couldn’t just read about her. I needed to feel the ground she walked on. I wanted to know what her body knew. The ache in the legs, the smell of the rivers, the moment when you’re so tired you stop thinking, and something older takes over.
I walked because my research doesn’t live in books. It lives in my nervous system. And I walked because I wanted to know if I could. I wanted to know what I was made of.
Turns out, I’m pretty stubborn too.
NAP: Performing a one-person show of this length is no easy feat either. You have only yourself for an hour to rely upon. What has been your biggest challenges in performing this work?
RW: There are two challenges, and they’re very different.
The first is that I’m new to this. I’m comfortable with public speaking. I’ve stood in front of rooms, I’ve given talks, I’ve done the academic thing. But performing is a different animal entirely. I’m learning it as I go, and I’m very aware that I’m still learning.
The second challenge is the ADHD itself. And honestly, this is the bigger one.Performing a fifty-minute solo show when your brain is wired for distraction, tangents, and spiralling thoughts is a unique kind of torture. I have to learn the script, which my dyslexic brain resists. I have to stay on track, which my ADHD brain fights against. I have to remember where I am in the story, which my dyspraxic brain finds genuinely hilarious. I have to hold the emotional arc of the whole thing in my head while also being present in the moment,which, for a brain that lives in tangents, is like trying to hold water in your hands.
And the irony is that this is exactly what the show is about. My neurodivergence isn’t a barrier to the work, it’s the methodology. ADHD is the reason I notice things other people miss. The synesthesia is the reason I can feel the history in the ground. But it also means that holding a fifty-minute structure is genuinely hard. That tension is the show. And I’m still figuring out how to hold it.
NAP: Speaking of neurodivergence, it is one of the main themes of the shows. What do you want people to understand about neurodivergence that they might not already know?
RW: I want them to understand that it’s not a deficit. It’s a language. My ADHD, my synesthesia, my dyslexia—these aren’t things I need to fix. They’re the reason I can taste iron in the soil. The reason I can hear a battlefield choir two thousand years later. The reason I can carve an oracle deck from the sensory memory of a rebellion.
For most of my life, I was told my brain was a problem. And I believed it. I made myself small. I apologised for existing. I crossed the street to avoid walking past groups of men.
But then I met Boudica. And she taught me that the fire isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s something to be shared. So that’s what I’m doing.
NAP: Is that something you want the audience to feel as well?
RW: I want them to feel seen. That’s the first thing. If you’ve ever been told you’re too much, or not enough, or that your story doesn’t matter. I was hoping you could leave knowing that it does.
I want them to feel connected to the ground beneath their feet. The next time they walk down Colchester High Street, I want them to pause and think of the layer of ash under there, and maybe connect with it.
And I want them to feel like they can pass the fire on. The knowledge that you can survive. That you can walk through your own fire and come out the other side stronger and more whole.
NAP: You talk about Boudica’s voice in the show. Is that literal? A metaphor? Do you actually hear her?
RW: Yes and no. It’s not a ghost story. She doesn’t appear in my dreams or float through my living room. But when I’m carving, when I’m walking the land she walked, when I’m standing in front of an audience—I hear something. A voice that’s drier than mine. More certain. Less apologetic. It’s a presence, an ember, a knowing that sits just behind my sternum. I call it her because that’s the closest word I have.
‘Boudica & Me: I’ll Share the Fire but Not the Ashes‘ is on Sun 25 October 6:00 pm, Mon 26 October 8:30 pm, and Sun 1 November 6:00 pm during Colchester Fringe. While you’re here, read about our coverage of others shows at this year’s Colchester Fringe including about a one man King Arthur, Shakespeare’s least known play, or FringeReview’s resident interviewer Dr.Pant’s (a play in a) DARK ROOM.
