Brighton Fringe 2025
Too Small to Tell
Lying Bear Productions - A One-Woman Show by Lisa Rose (Co-created with Assistant Director Paula Stanic) Directed by Tracy Bargate.
Venue: The Rotunda and IronWorks
Festival: Brighton Fringe
Low Down
Too Small to Tell – Lying Bear Productions – A One-Woman Show by Lisa Rose (Co-created with Assistant Director Paula Stanic) Directed by Tracy Bargate.
Emerging from a Developing Your Creative Practice grant funded by Arts Council England, Too Small to Tell is an evolving piece of theatre that blends storytelling, personal testimony, and devised performance.
Co-created by Lisa Rose and Paula Stanic, the show is still in development—but what is already present is timely, and honest. It bills itself as A story that is NOT about H@rv3y W3insti3in. Make of that what you will.In other words I have been asked not to mention the names of certain individuals mentioned in this show. But go see it!
The work is informed not only by Lisa Rose’s experience as a performer but also by the personal and professional encounters as an actress that have shaped her voice. She worked for H@rv3y W3insti3in!
Review
At the heart of Too small to tell ,is a central narrative, told in a classic theatre monologue form. Lisa stands at the mic, a narrator-guide, holding the structure of the story while stepping away at moments to inhabit various scenes—scenes dominated by a certain film mogul (currently in custody), whose presence onstage is both grotesque and disturbingly familiar.( I’ve been asked not to mention his name by the team)
With his legs spread wide, he takes up too much space. “Manspreading” is a popular term that comes to mind—demanding attention, obedience, and deference from those around him. It’s a kind of madness that recalls the old saying: “Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This is the territory of the bully!
These scenes are based on real-life accounts, including testimonies from women who worked for this figure—among them, Lisa’s sister who pre- warned her of the potential dangers, and a close friend.
Lisa herself once worked within the orbit of this famous film mogul and although she did not experience abuse directly, what she witnessed had a significant impact on her both personally and professionally bringing her to make this show about finding your voice in a world that tried to silence it.
The idea for the show first emerged during a BBC interview in which she reflected on that period of her life when she worked for Miramax films.What unfolds on stage is a searching, human investigation of memory, complicity, silence, survival—and the painful weight of patterns that are, at first, “too small to tell,” until suddenly they have to be told.
The clear dramaturgical shape of the show makes the piece very accessible for ‘a traditional theatre audience’. and the innovation lies not in its form, but in ‘the potential’ of its content as the piece evolves-(particularly when the forth wall is tentatively broken to invite the audience into the story).
Performed in the intimate setting of the Rotunda at Brighton Fringe, the venue suits this kind of storytelling and subject matter well. The performance invites us in, holding us with warmth, wit, and, at times, an intentionally uncomfortable edge. Lisa Rose displays versatility as an actress, moving fluidly between roles, embodying a range of characters while never losing the thread of the central story.
Though still in progress, the piece has a solid core—and an energy that is alive and asking for answers. Occasional film clips are part of the show with locations highlighted in text, (silent movie style) on a screen behind the main action.
In conversation with Lisa before the show, I discovered we share a common training background: we both trained with Philippe Gaulier.Lisa spoke of the challenges and liberation of his approach— I had completed his training in the 1990s and was particularly drawn to his concept of the Bouffon: the grotesque clown, the outsider who mocks from the margins, irreverent, animalistic, dangerous. These are the figures with nothing to lose. In medieval times, Bouffons were the only ones who could mock kings to their faces.
That same spirit appears briefly, in Too Small to Tell—not least in the sudden arrival of a giant penis.
I won’t spoil the details, but this visual metaphor touches dark humour and absurdity to highlight the deep violence and ridiculousness of unchecked power. There’s more in this me thinks!
Too small to tell nods to the wider cultural and legal reckoning ushered in by the #MeToo movement.
Lisa’s performance sits in the context of ongoing cases involving public figures, reminding us that these stories are not relics of the past—they’re part of a living struggle for justice and dignity.
Fixed patterns of behaviour are often invisible, systemic, and deeply entrenched.
It is no coincidence, then, that the rise of the intimacy coordinator— (now a presence in film and theatre)—has come into focus. Intimacy coordinators exist to safeguard actors during intimate scenes, protecting against coercion, imbalance, and abuse. The need for such a role speaks volumes about the culture that Too Small to Tell confronts—and why it is important that stories like this are told.
This is theatre as excavation, as testimony and resistance. Too Small to tell is not a finished product—and it doesn’t pretend to be. Its theatre in process – and in its current form,it refuses to look away.
The seeds are already sewn in the existing show : the moral complexity, the uncomfortable questions of how both victim and perpetrator become entangled in these systems. At the moment they are delivered in a very theatrical literary style but I couldn’t help but feel that there is more to explore here and I would like to see how the piece continues to grow—how it moves closer to the chaotic, painful edge of what it means to be human. Gaulier -‘Bouffon Style’.
