Interviews

5 minutes with Summer Strallen: 'I was definitely a tag-along little sister'

Currently appearing in the UK tour of ”Hysteria”, Strallen talks about growing up with a stagey family, and training to become a birthing partner

Summer Strallen
Summer Strallen
© Dan Wooler for WhatsOnStage

My earliest stagey memory is probably being on the sound desk at Cats when my parents were in it. That was when I was about 2. When I was 3 I was in the Aladdin pantomime with Cilla Black. I remember being thrown around to "Shall We Dance?" by the Emperor. I can't remember who played the Emperor, but he did buy me a lovely, big teddy bear at the end of the run.

Sisters Scarlett and Summer Strallen in 2013
Sisters Scarlett and Summer Strallen in 2013
© Dan Wooller for WhatsOnStage

My grandmother ran a dancing youth group, which was a bit like glorified babysitting while my parents were at shows. Mum and Dad had professionals come in to teach us too, so we were actually learning from the pros. It was really cool, they were teaching us the numbers from musicals they'd been in. That was the beginning of it.

I was definitely a tag-along little sister. I spent so much of my young teens with her, but she dealt with it gracefully. I followed in her footsteps and went to ArtsEd. It looked like a lot more fun than doing maths and science at secondary school, and there were more boys.

I’m very interested in birth and death. I was afraid of dying without having done anything, that's part of the reason why I wanted to push myself. And in June I'm going to train to be a birth partner. I'm still deciding whether acting is what I love to do.

Hysteria explores the human side of Professor Sigmund Freud. It's set in his study during the last days of his life. He was given a deadly dose of morphine to combat his jaw cancer. It's so confusing and so complex, but beautifully so. It imagines someone in chronic pain and how a person's mind can play tricks on them. I play Jessica who turns up outside at the window soaking wet from the rain, and he doesn't really know who she is or why she's there.

The play teeters on the edge of tragedy and comedy at the same time. Terry Johnson [playwright] likes to bring people back from the dead to explain things about their psyche. He’s very good at giving a lot of subtext in the stage direction to help you execute what you’re doing and what it’s about. It’s very descriptive which is really useful.

Hysteria opens at Malvern Theatre on 1 February before touring the UK.