Since debuting at the 2025 Brighton Fringe, the show has continued to evolve with each performance using puppetry and physical theatre to deliver a raw and emotional message alongside its bizarre premise of a woman who falls in love with a hoover.

Claudia talks to Holly Critchley about the catharsis that comes with turning trauma into art and the challenges of confronting her abuse onstage.

Split Ends uses the surreal image of a woman falling in love with a vacuum cleaner. Where did that idea come from?

Claudia: “I’ve always had an OCD compulsion to cut my own hair, and yet this relationship I was in happened to be with the hairiest man in the world. His hairs would shed all over my apartment and I became obsessed with vacuuming them up. But they just kept appearing. My compulsion had transpired into just vacuuming up all his hair, and I realised how the hair grows back and repeats its cycles was such a good metaphor for being stuck in a controlling relationship.”

What kind of relationship were you enduring?

Claudia: “I was in a vulnerable place already when I got into a relationship that quickly became emotionally abusive. The man I was with would pick at my self-esteem, and keep on picking and picking. He would be a bad boyfriend, but if I confronted him on his behaviour, he would have astounding manipulation skills. The more this cycle happened, the more vulnerable I got, and suddenly I could no longer stand up for myself.”

Has performing ‘Split Ends’ so many times changed your understanding of your own experiences?

Claudia: “Definitely. Mainly, performing the piece has validated my experience – what happened to me was abuse, and I wasn’t dramatising it. When I first performed it was the first time that I got clarity. The feedback from the audience was so important. It reminded me that what happened to me shouldn’t have happened and this show wasn’t exploiting that. I didn’t have the proper words for the experience, so performing the show was at first semi for myself to express my emotions. But people would tell me how Split Ends really touched them, so it eventually became less for me and more as a way to connect with other people and validate their experiences of abusive relationships. As more time has passed, I’ve become more detached from the material, which has made it easier to perform than it was in the beginning.”

How do you balance art with heaviness when portraying coercive control on stage?

Claudia: “I use the vacuum and a piece of scissors as a puppet for my abuser. It’s inherently absurd, but it provides some levity too. But I’ve also faced criticism before that the play is too raw or too real, like watching someone go through it in real time.”

What do you hope audiences take away from ‘Split Ends’?

Claudia: “I wasn’t expecting so many people to reach out to me after performances, but so many have told me they experienced something similar and didn’t have the words for it. A lot of people are gaslit to such an extent that they struggle to even identify what happened to them. As heartbreaking as those messages can be, they’ve also shown me how important these conversations are. If the show helps even one person recognise those patterns in their own relationship, then it’s worth doing.”

Split Ends comes to Contact, Manchester on 19 and 20 May 2026.

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Kuchipudi is an incredible form of dance. What drew you to it?

Payal: “So I started training in Kuchipudi when I was four. I did not have much of an understanding of what the dance style was at that time; I got started into it by my parents. But it’s a South Indian classical dance form. If I were to draw a parallel with something you may be familiar with, it would be ballet — not stylistically, but in terms of its structure and the discipline it requires.

“It’s replete with footwork and hand gestures. It’s a way of communication and storytelling. We use a lot of facial expressions to communicate ideas and tell stories, really using the whole body. Rhythm forms the backbone of it, and it’s very rich musically — they go hand in hand, of course. I mean, music and dance naturally go together, so that’s essentially what Kuchipudi is.”

What inspired you to create this work around motherhood and miscarriage?

Payal: “It’s a combination of several factors. I’m at that stage where I’ve been contemplating motherhood myself, but I’ve also watched others on their own journeys. The work I make usually stems from a place of curiosity — that’s my entry point into any project. It comes from feeling like I don’t know enough about a particular idea or subject, and wanting to explore it further. Motherhood is not just a simplistic term. It is a landscape of emotions. I make work that I feel needs to be spoken about.

“For me, dance is the medium I choose because it gives me a way to discover and better understand that subject matter. Then I invite people onto that journey with me — I share it with the audience, who can take part either as spectators or participants, depending on how the work unfolds.”

Do you think it’s easy to cover powerful topics through art and dance?

Payal:“I don’t know if it’s easy, but I would certainly say that it’s my way. It’s my medium, it’s the medium that I know best, it’s the medium where I can express myself to the best of my ability. So that’s my medium. Dance helps me express myself best. I think there are a lot of things that remain unsaid. Art is a great way of telling people things. I think art remains with you, even when you leave a performance. The performance stays with you for a long time. And that is the beauty of art. That is the impact that art has on people.”

How long have you been working on ‘Just Enough Madness’?

Payal: “It was born, I think, somewhere around 2019. So, it’s been a long, long time. There were gaps in between, but it was always there in my mind. Even while I was working on other productions, there would be times when I would revisit it and then just let it simmer in the background and then come back to it. It’s been through different phases. It’s been re-researched and redeveloped, and now we’re finally doing this pilot tour with hopefully a more extensive tour next year.”

How can you convince someone to come watch?

Payal: “I think everyone has either been a witness to motherhood or experienced it themselves. You know, we’ve either seen our own mothers or watched a sister, a wife, or a friend go through the journey of motherhood. And if you are someone who has witnessed it or been on that journey yourself, I would just say: come see a glimpse of yourself in it, and come to recognise the emotional labour, the rigour that a woman goes through. I’m not talking about the physical aspect so much — I mean the more unsaid truths of motherhood. Yeah. So I think it’s really a way of celebrating motherhood in the truest sense of the word, not just superficially.”

Just Enough Madness & Caught in the Net of Rebirth is at Lowry, Salford on Tuesday 31 March 2026.

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For Jack, Queer Contact is about far more than a programme of events. He describes it as a coming together of “different genres, different sexualities, different ethnicities and different people in general.” At its heart, he says, “It’s really celebratory and fun. It’s a safe space for queer people, and it’s a vital part of pride in Manchester.”

Running for more than 16 years, the festival has become a long-standing fixture in the city’s cultural calendar, and Jack believes it remains a vital platform for queer creatives in Manchester. The programme has been desiged to ensuer there is something for everyone, spanning theatre, cabaret, film, live art and even line dancing, alongside bustling market stalls showcasing work from local queer makers.

And Jack promises this year’s festival is the best yet. “This year we’re running over two weeks, and we’ve got a real range of shows,” he says. From solo shows to cabarets and the returning live-art shows, Jack knows that the Queer Contact festival is worth as much of a visit now as ever. “We’re trying to represent as many different people as we can within the festival and get everyone together to have a really good time”.

The festival has grown into a cornerstone of the city’s cultural calendar. For Jack, its continued presence is more important than ever. “It’s the political culture and how we as a country are feeling less welcoming and less inclusive. I think there’s been a lot of really negative, damaging things happening to the queer community,” he says. “Although it’s not an activist space, specifically this festival, it’s about having that opportunity to come together and to celebrate and to be joyful.”

Although the festival has been going for years, there’s no plans for it to slow down, as Jack and the team constantly evolve and adapt the festival. “It’s definitely ever changing. It doesn’t feel stale, it feels current,” he says.

When it was revealed last year that Manchester Pride had entered liquidation, the state of queer recognition and celebration in Manchester felt uncertain. But Queer Contact has always distinguished itself as an entirely different space to celebrate the LGBTQ community, the festival remaining firmly arts focused. “Queer Contact’s specifically an arts festival… it’s very art specific based. It’s a very inclusive space. It’s very representative of the wider community,” Jack explains. “We’re trying to get as many things within the festival as we can so that everyone could feel seen.”

Accessibility remains central to the festival’s ethos, says Jack. With tickets starting from £3, and some events free, the aim is for festival-goers to celebrate queer talent without financial barriers, during a time where the cost of living continues to bite. “We really want people to be able to feel like they can come and see work and come and enjoy it and come and celebrate with each other,” Jack says. “We also offer Pinch tickets, these are our lowest priced tickets available and people can get them with no questions asked. It’s really about recognising who we’re here for.”

As a queer man himself, Jack recognises the importance of working on Queer Contact, and what it means for him personally to be able to showcase this exceptional talent over these two weeks. “This was the first arts festival I ever went to when I moved to Manchester,” he recalls. “It was the first time I ever saw such a wide range of what different queer art can be.”

There is an amazing display of talent within the queer Manchester community, and it’s important institutions, like Contact, have spaces for these talents to be recognised and upheld. “It’s important that everyone can feel seen,’ says Jack, “There’s work on display that speaks about my life.”

Jack recognises the cultural context of queer people in Manchester, and shares how he hopes Contact can offer more opportunities and events for the community that steers away from nightlife and partying. “Partly what drew me to Manchester was the queer community. Queer culture is often focused around the gay village, drinking and partying, and that kind of hedonistic lifestyle. Manchester definitely offers that. But I also think the city offers so much more than that for queer people,” he says.

There is a sense of belonging and familiarity for queer people in Manchester, something the festival hopes to also achieve. “We provide that space where anyone can come and feel like they’re safe”. Over two weeks, the showcase includes a solo show, an ‘anti Valentine’s cabaret night, an art market supplied by queer art makers, and queer-run western and country dancing. It’s jam-packed with something for absolutely everyone, so every single person attending can feel heard. “If we don’t put on artists that are representative of the entire community, then that community doesn’t feel seen.”

Queer Contact runs from 12–21 February 2026.

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