About Helen Wood
Helen loves to perform comedy and has dabbled in a variety of comic styles, including stand-up, sketch comedy, performance poetry, comedy improv and clowning. During her early adult years, while living in Hackney, she was involved in community theatre, both performing and directing, and she liked nothing better than playing eccentric comic characters, such as Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Sparsit in Hard Times and a swashbuckling Captain Hook in Peter Pan.
With Freshwater Theatre Company, the drama-in-education company which she co-founded in 1996, she played several characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream on a tour of Italy. This was followed by many years of playing larger-than-life, historical characters in educational history shows for school audiences in the U.K.
Following the success of the two-hander, The Usherettes, in 2014, she began to write and perform solo comedy shows. What Kind of Fool Am I? was followed by a trilogy of ‘Fan Club’ shows; The O.S. Map Fan Club, The National Trust Fan Club and The Foraging Fan Club. The latest ‘Fan Club’ show, a celebration of foraging, is touring from summer 2024.
Between 2022 and 2023 Helen took a break from performing comedy shows and wrote and performed the autobiographical two-hander, Let’s Talk About Philip. Despite it being about her brother’s suicide, Helen felt that it was important for the play to have plenty of warm humour threaded throughout.