Elf Lyons: Entirely True Memories from Childhood

Written by: Elf Lyons
Published: Thursday 22nd June 2017

Stand-up Elf Lyons has been performing a stand-up show about her parents. Below she gives us ten examples of how her unique upbringing gave her the skills she needed to become a performer.

My parents sometimes say things like "What are you doing?", "Why are you dressed as a parrot?", "I don't understand this performance art piece you have made", "Stand still I am trying to draw you" and "Stop misrepresenting us on stage, we never said that".

I have to tell them, no matter what happened I was always going to end up becoming a performer. I owe it all to their amazing and innovative parenting skills.

Whilst I prepare to perform PELICAN, my stand-up show about my mother, for one last time at the Soho Theatre, here is a list of some of my favourite memories and life lessons which my parents taught me, which caused me to go into performance. None of this is in any way exaggerated or made up at all.

Lesson 1: Loyalty

My dad began taking me to regular Fulham football games at Craven Cottage from the age of 6. These regular showcases of losing and performing badly taught me about dealing with failure gracefully and having loyalty and faith in things even when you can see and tell that there is no way anything positive is going to happen.

Lesson 2: Exercise

My mum works with horses. To help me get fit when I was a teenager my mum used to put me in the local horse ring and teach me how to do Dressage, as it was a good workout. I learnt the passage, the piaffe, the pirouette, the flying change of leg, and how to carry my mother on my back.

It taught me all about poise, obedience and gave me a certain individuality when it came to dancing in public. Also, when I went to clown school, our teacher said he'd never seen such a good impression of a horse.

Lesson 3: Contouring

When I was a teenager my dad and I used to enter weekly fancy dress competitions as the Tart and the Vicar. I was the Vicar, He was the Tart, because it was considered inappropriate if the child in the scenario dressed up as the latter. My mother made the costumes and did my dad's make-up and I would write the script - which mainly consisted of my favourite quotes from Leviticus. We were a good double act and often were placed 2nd or 4th. This experience taught me about contouring and the art of drag. This really helped when I started playing all the boy parts at secondary school.

Lesson 4: Death

When I was a child I was desperate for a rabbit. We picked the rabbit from the shop. We bought the cage. On the day of my birthday no rabbit appeared. My parents told me that my rabbit was an invisible rabbit. Every day I cleaned the cage and walked my invisible rabbit around the garden. It was a great example of teaching a child responsibility with low risk. One day I came home to find the rabbit cage was gone...

Apparently Rebecca, my invisible rabbit, had died in a horrific freak accident involving the lawn mower. I was devastated. But in hindsight as an adult woman I know that it wasn't a real rabbit that died, only the imaginary talking-best friend and trusted confidant I had invented in my head who was my only source of happiness and joy during my lonely youth. It's all about perspective.

This experience in no way influenced my later opinion that there is no point loving anyone or anything because they will one day be taken away from you.

Lesson 5: Survival

When I was 8, my mother made me and my sister watch The Shining in order to understand stranger-danger and how it is important to trust your instincts and think on your feet. She also used to dress me and my sister up as the twins from The Shining for fancy dress competitions - because she said it was important to 'think outside the box' creatively and 'not do what everyone expects because that is what the patriarchy want you to do'. This taught me a lot about cinematography and is one of the reasons why I have a distinct phobia of twins and long corridors.

Lesson 6: Art

My mother once took me to see a four hour long production of Jane-Eyre-the Musical at the Bob Hope Theatre in Eltham with my grandmother, Nanny Squeak. Mr Rochester's dog was a man in a leather gimp suit. I remember feeling confused and aroused and having a lot of questions. My mother then told me "This is what art is."

Lesson 7: Education

I didn't like primary school because one of the teachers used to throw pens at me. My mother didn't like my primary school because one of the teachers used to throw pens at her. So, my mum decided that we didn't really need to go to school that much as it was a "stressful place to enforce the capitalist patriarchal structure on children at a young age" (her words). We would spend all day in bed with my mum and watch films. Horror films, French films, German films, Soviet films, silent films... and one film where Sean Bean didn't die. This is the reason I went on to study Film at university and one of the reasons I never passed Key Stage 2 Maths.

Lesson 8: Teamwork

In order to get us into the cinema to see films that were too old for us, we would work collectively to make my siblings and I look older. My Nanny Squeak would be in charge of costume design, my mum would do the make-up, my siblings and I would practise our accents.

Our plan failed only once, when we dressed my 10 year-old brother up as a teenager girl to get into Shaun Of The Dead. We got stopped at the gate, my mum shouted 'RUN' and each one of us took off in separate directions at the Odeon cinema. We got caught and were given a one month ban, alongside the manager asking my mum "Why aren't these children in school?". This taught me about gang life and how preparation for any major performance is key.

Lesson 9: Comic Timing

My dad would travel around the world all the time, travelling for his job. He was often tired and jet lagged and would sleep a lot when he came home. One of our favourite games that my mother taught us was to buy as many different clock radios as possible and set them for different times and hide them in his bedroom. This was a subtle and humorous way of telling him that we loved him and we wanted him to watch The Shining with us again.

Lesson 10: Orienteering

My mother's favourite film on parenting was Battle Royale. Once a month, my mother would blindfold us and leave my sister, brother and I in the centre of a maze. We would then, listening out for the animal cries she would make, work our way out and back to her. Whichever one of us got out first was allowed to sit in the front seat of the car and have a jammy donut. The last of us to find our way out was forced to run along behind the car, to improve our stamina and long distance running. This taught us the important lesson that there is no TEAM in 'I', and that I can't run fast.

Lesson 11: Never let facts get in the way of a good story

Other than that, it was a pretty normal childhood.