BATSHIT, Leah Shelton On Agency and Control

BATSHIT is Leah Shelton‘s darkly funny exorcism of control, surveillance, and the word crazy. If you removed every line of text, the story would still throb through camp couture, green light, a 1950s television flicker, and limbs that refuse to behave. Live feed cameras mimic CCTV, audiences watch and are watched, the uneasy loop speaks to the loss of agency inside institutions. Comedy arrives like a sugar rush, then a sting, a woman tells misogynist jokes while gagged, an arm extends beyond reason, laughter tilts into alarm, and back again. Director Ursula Martinez asked for less armour and more truth, the result holds showmanship and raw confession in the same body. Sound designer Kenneth Lyons, also called Radio Shirley, builds a score, Jason Glenwright and Freddy Komp rig a choir of fluorescent light, medical files flash like verdicts. Consent and care sit beside provocation, trigger warnings, access notes, and a quiet space invite people to choose the way through. BATSHIT draws on Mad Pride, refuses neat fixes, and asks what would happen if kindness and time were our first response. Leah Shelton opens up about agency, satire, and the making of a show that laughs, shudders, and insists on dignity.

If you removed every spoken word from Batshit, what would still tell the story for us, and which nonverbal element carries the most weight for you.

As an artist, design and physicality are so integral to performance for me so there’s a lot going on in BATSHIT that is nonverbal! There’s camp costuming, ranging from a 1950s green frothy prom queen dress to straight-jacket belted couture; videos screened on a 1950s television; absurdist object manipulation with fake limbs; stylised physical performance; stark projection of medical case files; an intricate layered sound design by the iconic Kenneth Lyons (aka Radio Shirley); and an epic lighting design by Jason Glenwright comprising 21 fluorescent lighting fixtures created by the technical wizard Freddy Komp. All of these components play against each other so seamlessly that it’s hard to say what carries the most weight! But if I had to pick one, I think the use of live feed to simulate CCTV surveillance is one of the most powerful components of the work, as it really conveys the lack of agency and overarching control that many people feel within institutions.

The word “crazy” can be diagnosis, insult, badge, and marketing hook. After living with this project, what is your relationship with that word now.

It’s such a complex word with so much societal baggage attached, and I think my relationship with the word is equally complex. I feel rage at the way the concept of crazy/madness has been weaponised; I feel deep sadness for those who have lost their agency through the use of the term; and I also feel there is a sense of empowerment in subverting and re-claiming the word, for example in the ways that the Mad Pride and Mad Studies movements have taken back stigmatising terms and instead embraced them as a source of pride, identity and culture.

What is one note from director Ursula Martinez that hurt to hear at first, then changed the show for the better.

As a performer, I’m so comfortable in the heightened worlds of melodrama, theatricality and high camp; but working with Ursula really pushed me to reveal a raw, authentic side of myself in a way that I haven’t done before. And this was a vulnerable process! But I’m so grateful for her attention to detail, for not letting me off the hook when something didn’t feel authentic, for the drilling and repetition and doing it again until it felt right.

Dark comedy can soothe or slice. Where do you draw the line between laughing with pain and laughing at it, and what staging choice keeps the audience on the right side of that line.

I’m interested in using comedy to shift and twist our perspectives on things – whether it be something that is absurdly funny but also confronting (like a woman telling misogynist stand-up comedy jokes while gagged), or an extreme image (like an extended false arm that plays with the eye’s perception). I think it’s a complex line and for me I think it’s actually the interplay between being on the right side or the wrong side of the line that is where satirical / political comedy lives.

Imagine a psychiatrist from 1965 and a psychiatrist from 2025 sitting side by side in your audience. Which moment do you think makes each of them shift in their seat, and for different reasons.

There is a moment in the show where we take a list of psychiatrist questions (some of which are so simple and banal – “do you know what day it is today?”, “are you sleeping well?”) and we flip them on the audience, to show that once you’re viewed as mad, often it doesn’t matter how you answer these questions. I think this gives people a moment to both laugh and also to see how dangerous pathologisation can be.

BATSHIT samples pop culture and the language of camp and horror. Which reference unlocked the biggest door in rehearsal, and what did it let you say that straight realism could not.

Rather than one key reference, I think the work is a product of accumulation, so it’s actually the power of layering multiple images and cultural references side-by-side that creates the impact. So, by traversing from the high camp of lip-sync, melodrama and a Joan Crawford-esque axe-wielding psycho-siren to the raw storytelling of me reading out intimate letters I’ve written to Gwen, it’s the interplay between these images that makes us see how pervasive the image of the madwoman is in our contemporary culture.

The design toys with perception. How did you use design, sound and light to mimic gaslighting or diagnostic authority?

The set creates a false perspective with white grid floor and backdrop; and the hanging fluorescent-style LED lights immerse the audience, simulating the alienating lighting we experience in so many institutional settings. Sometimes the lights are blindingly bright; sometimes they gradually and imperceptibly change colour over many minutes. The colour palette is awash with shades of green. All of these design elements combine to play with the audience’s perception of reality – we wanted to create a surreal, liminal space that is reminiscent of hospitals, of padded cells; of entrapment and helplessness, creating a feeling of what it might be like to be gaslit and pathologised without agency.

The show asks for audience trust. How did you think about consent, care, and aftercare in moments that are intimate or confronting, for the audience and for you.

We spent a lot of time thinking about the audience journey in the crafting of the show, and while we didn’t want to shy away from people feeling uncomfortable, we also wanted people to feel safe. I think because the work isn’t didactic, and because there are moments of humour and release, it allows people to experience the work on their own terms and process it in their own way. And of course, we also have trigger warnings for the show, along with information about access to support services and the option for people to use a quiet space if they need it.

If BATSHIT could trigger one practical change in how institutions respond when a woman says she is not okay, what would you want that change to be, and who most needs to hear it.

In the show, I read out this line from a letter I have written to Gwen:

I wish you didn’t have to suffer such extreme, brutal treatment, where maybe kindness and time would have been better.

And I think this holds true. How do we create systems that prioritise kindness and time over other treatments like medication and shutting people away, in a society where we are always looking for the quick fix?

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BATSHIT is playing as part of Brisbane Festival.

For tickets CLICK HERE