Key Seeds Spotlight: Emma-Louise Howell – What Are We Looking For?
See it at The Key Theatre, Saturday 3rd May at 6pm
As part of our Key Seeds artist development programme, we’re excited to introduce Emma-Louise Howell, whose latest project What Are We Looking For? turns the lens on our collective obsession with True Crime stories. Emma-Louise brings a unique, questioning perspective to the stage, blurring the lines between entertainment and real-life empathy. Ahead of her upcoming performance, we asked Emma-Louise about the inspiration behind the show, her creative process, and what she hopes audiences will take away.
Key Seeds Artist Q&A: Emma-Louise Howell – What Are We Looking For?
1. Your piece is titled What Are We Looking For? – a question that feels both deeply personal and universal. What does it mean to you, and how did the idea for the piece first emerge?
The piece centres around our obsession with True Crime – and particularly unsolved crimes or stories of missing women. There’s been this huge increase in podcast culture, internet sleuthing and armchair detectives and I’m fascinated by it. I’ve always been really interested in audiences and how they engage with stories – so I wanted to write about something that already had a huge following, audience and commercial interest. But, of course, I’m not just giving them a ‘play’ version of a True Crime podcast, I’m using the Theatre space to question why we’re obsessed with these stories and how we can tell stories about violence or crime without making them commercial grounds for entertainment.
So, What Are We Looking For has a bit of a dual meaning: yes, it’s about “Looking For” missing women or the criminal – but it’s also a direct ask to my audience: why are you looking at these stories? Why do we have this desperate need to solve cold cases? What is that obsession saying about our society as a whole?
2. Can you give us a glimpse into what audiences can expect from your performance? What themes or ideas are you exploring on stage?
For all the reasons I’ve just outlined, this isn’t a conventional play. Without too many spoilers, it starts out as a Cold Case, Detective story but then it gradually unfolds into something else.
I wanted to use the audience and the theatre as a space to really question what True Crime stories are and whether they should be entertainment. So, it’s quite a meta-theatrical play. The story starts to unravel itself and pulls the audience into a space of questioning their role in these stories. If everyone leaves asking themselves: “why do I entertain myself with crime or violent stories”, then I think I’ve achieved my goal.
3. Your work often combines movement, voice and visual storytelling – how do these elements come together in this particular project?
This has been quite an ambitious show for me because I’ve moved quite far away from my really theatrical and visual work. My last show was a bit of a feast of Video Design, Movement and lots and lots of colour – whereas this is a lot more stark and brutal. What I wanted to draw attention to is the podcast culture that perpetrates True Crime stories so, really, audio is the main focus for me here. I wanted to focus on voices and being totally immersed in the gripping ‘case’. It’s forced me to work quite differently but it’s really made me focus on language and voices – and how we construct a story.
Eventually, when we fully stage this show, I’d love to play more with audio. Perhaps have my audience wear headphones or release it in episodes so we can really pay homage to the podcasting culture.
4. Are there personal experiences or observations that have directly influenced the development of What Are We Looking For?
Really, I think it came from the disparity in media reporting about violence against women. We’ve seen landmark cases like Nicola Bulley recently where TikTokers and Internet Sleuths have released conspiracy theories or pushed the mainstream media intimate details that have been totally inappropriate. We’re living in a world now where any and everyone can post their ‘news’ or ‘insights’ for the world to see and it’s hard to regulate or differentiate between genuine care for these women and voyeurism. I think we often forget that these aren’t conceptual, fictional narratives – but there are families and lives at the heart of them – and we aren’t entitled to speculate or invade them just because they’re a headline.
Of course, on the flipside of that, we have a mass underreporting of cases that involve a woman of colour. Only 18% of cases involving women of colour are reported on in the media – in comparison to 52% of white women. In America, the journalist Gwen Ifill coined this ‘Missing White Women Syndrome’ where the media commercialise stories about young, middle class white girls but deny the same reporting on Black Women.
It’s complex stuff. In order to really tackle violence against women, we do need these stories to be out in the mainstream. We need to loudly tell the world that there is mass injustice and unimaginable suffering still being perpetrated. But how do we do that in a sensitive, equitable and compassionate way? How can we stop them becoming entertainment whilst also allowing people to care? How do we ensure the best people are telling these stories?
5. How would you describe your creative process? Do you start with a concept, a feeling, a sound – or something entirely different?
I need to build the world and feeling before I do anything. That often involves making a lot of mood-boards, playlists, references and images before I even put pen to paper. I find that this really helps me understand the feeling and tone of a show – and then I build from there. With this piece, it’s written in Episodes rather than conventional scenes – so one episode might follow the feeling of being hunted, another one might explore the feeling of losing something, another might follow the idea of ‘selling’ a story. Individually, they all explore quite different themes and ideas but because I’ve got this “world” that I’ve built, they all belong to the same universe and core idea.
6. What artists, thinkers or experiences have shaped your voice as a maker? Any surprising influences?
I try to find inspiration from lots of different people and things.
Theatrically, writers like Martin Crimp, Alice Birch or Caryl Churchill are huge influences on my work. For me, their language is so precise and specific it totally reshapes how I engage with words, forms and structures. They constantly push me to use Theatre in different ways and I have learnt so much from studying their work.
But I also try to look outside Theatre. Sometimes I think there’s a danger we ‘makers’ can get too caught up in Theatre and I think we can learn so much from other mediums.
Alongside writing, I also work in Film and TV and have been really lucky to meet and work with Writers and Directors at the top of their game. I was lucky enough to work on S7 of Black Mirror last year – and that sort of dystopian realism is definitely present in all my work and, again, really puts the audience and ‘viewer’ at the forefront of what it’s trying to say.
But, also I really love engaging with work that’s totally separate to what I tend to create. Recently, I’ve been loving Florence and the Machine, Stath Lets Flats, Sampha, Inside No. 9, Elena Ferrante. I think what I try to always engage with is: why do people like this? Why does this resonate? How could I learn from this? That sort of intentional examination of different art forms can teach you so much about audiences and taste. That, I think, is universal and useful and can be applied to anything I write, regardless of form or theme.
7. How has the Key Seeds programme helped you to develop this piece? Have there been any breakthrough moments during the process?
The Key Seeds programme has given me so much time and space to really dig into this idea. It’s so rare so early on in the process to be able to breathe and consider what you want to make without the pressures of making a full production.
I think a breakthrough moment for me was sitting with Sonny and going ‘oh, this can be a story about why we like stories’. Small conversations like that – when you’re not in a rehearsal room or rushing into tech or panicking about ticket sales – can be rewarding. It reminds me of the excitement of making a show.
8. What do you hope audiences will feel, reflect on, or take away after seeing your work?
If people can leave the show questioning the line between the news, entertainment and the media then I think I’ve done what I intended.
As I said, it’s a story about how we engage with stories – so I’d like people to reflect on that.
9. What’s next for you? Are there future projects or ideas you’re excited to explore beyond this performance?
I’m really excited to develop this show some more and give it a full production with a full creative team. As I mentioned before, I’d love this to become a show that doesn’t just exist on the stage but could become an audio project that pays homage to True Crime culture.
Other than that, I’m really lucky to be developing quite a few new plays. I’ve got projects about the Housing Crisis, Climate Change and King John’s Jewels coming up – so I’m feeling really inspired at the moment. I’ve been working with amazing people all over the country at Attic, Lincoln Arts Centre, New Perspectives and Pentabus.
I’m also really lucky to start working on screenwriting – which is a new endeavour for me, but I’ve got a couple of Pilots in development which has all been really exciting.
10. And lastly – if you had to describe What Are We Looking For? in just three words… what would they be?
Can I say: Inverted True Crime?
Don’t Miss Out
Experience a gripping and thought-provoking journey into our true crime fascination with What Are We Looking For? at The Key Theatre on Saturday 3rd May at 6pm. Emma-Louise Howell’s work promises to challenge, provoke and leave you questioning the stories we tell and why we tell them.