Party, Not Pity @ The Quarry Theatre, Wednesday, 22 July 2026
Rosie Jones is a well-known figure from TV shows, such as The Last Leg, Mock the Week, Taskmaster and Would I Lie to You?, as well as for stand-up comedy and acting roles in series such as Silent Witness and Call the Midwife.
What is perhaps less well-known is the advocacy work of the Foundation she co-founded with Aisling O’Connor in 2025.
The Foundation fosters the talent of creative artists with cerebral palsy, and four of these artists showcased their work on stage at The Quarry Theatre on Wednesday, 22 July as part of the exciting Inclusive Performing Arts Festival held over two days from 22-23 July, organised by Elise Gray.
All four performers had been talent-spotted through the Creative Pathways strand of the Foundation, in collaboration with the dance artist Stella Howard from Embrace Space: Arts and Wellbeing.
This project promotes interactive workshops, presentations and networking opportunities for young people aged 14-24 living with cerebral palsy and encourages them to explore careers in the creative industries.
The workshops are all led by creative professionals with cerebral palsy and are designed to build confidence and provide a platform through which they can be seen and heard.
The workshops are open to people throughout the UK, with travel and accommodation subsidised by the Foundation.
The four accomplished young artists whose performances were hosted by Rosie are testament to the success of the project in attracting a range of talented individuals.
The first of these was Samuel, a guitarist/singer-songwriter from London, who performed two original songs, ‘Flight’ and ‘Colourful’.
Some of the frustrations he has experienced as a performer with a disability found an outlet in both the lyrics and the frenetic strumming of his guitar.
The enthusiastic reception he achieved from the audience set the tone for an evening which proved both thought-provoking and entertaining.
The second performer, fifteen-year-old Charlotte, used honesty and humour to explore the way in which being a wheelchair user often means feeling overlooked in social situations.
In two moving poems, ‘Unbreakable’ and ‘Invisible’, she conveyed her efforts to overcome this invisibility and, on occasions, overt bullying by peers, through developing mental resilience and self-belief.
She alluded to a phenomenon which many members of the audience clearly recognised in themselves – the tendency for people to talk over the heads of wheelchair users, rather than talking to them and acknowledging them as fully autonomous human beings.
However, Charlotte never ‘punched down’, as it were, by making audience members feel bad about themselves, but rather got them on board through creating scenarios involving unwitting thoughtlessness and by using witty quips to catch us off-guard and thus make us think differently.
For instance, at the outset she asked the audience what was so different about people in motorised wheelchairs, such as hers, when most people drive anyway?
She went on to turn around the perception that she is ‘disabled’ by pointing out that, unlike most of us, she never has to trek upstairs.
The third performer, Abbie, is more used to scouting for talent than being in the spotlight herself.
So accomplished was her debut stand-up act that Rosie joked, to much laughter from the audience, that she would have to kill her after the show.
Abbie’s hilarious routine spoke to those living with cerebral palsy whose disability is hidden, in that the only physical manifestation of her condition was a stark scan of her brain projected onto a huge screen showing a blank space in the right lobe of her brain.
The final performer, fourteen-year-old Fred, read out a heartfelt poem which began with a list of words which cumulatively conveyed his sense of the reductive narratives he encounters on a daily basis in relation to his disability.
Aisling O’Connor, the show’s producer, says “he loves drama – on and off the stage” and this was certainly evident in the way in which he drew the audience in with his account of the raw truths of living with cerebral palsy.
As with all the performers, he emphasised the positive confidence he achieves from being part of a supportive community of creative practitioners, spearheaded by professionals in the arts who have refused to allow their experience of living with cerebral palsy to stand in the way of their aspirations to challenge dominant societal expectations of what people with disabilities can do.
Throughout the show, Sam Hollier, the amazingly talented BSL Interpreter, did so much more than merely translate the performers’ words.
Instead, she offered a series of expressive and engaging performances of her own to make the whole event accessible to Deaf audience members in real time.
She did this by matching the pace, energy and rhythm of each of the acts.
This involved seamless register-switching from the visual intensity of Samuel’s punk lyrics, through her attention to the striking imagery and emotional nuance of the poetry performed by Charlotte and Fred, to the precise comic timing of Abbie’s stand-up routine.
Sam’s facial expression, embodied movement, and spatial grammar carried the tone and humour that spoken English would convey through vocal inflection.
Rosie’s seemingly self-deprecating comment that she had made Sam’s role so much easier than it might otherwise have been because of the slow pace of delivery of her speech won cathartic laughter and applause from the audience.
The Party, Not Pity event was only one of the many arts and crafts, well-being, dance, and sensory sessions that together formed a wonderfully inclusive and innovative two-day festival held at the Quarry Theatre.
This was made possible by the passion and enthusiasm of the organising team (Elise, Sadie, Lissy and Fizz), professional practitioners, such as the wonderfully energetic BollyQueer performance group and Vietnamese stand-up act Thao Cao, a group of very willing volunteers and enlightened sponsors.
Hopefully, in future years the festival will go from strength to strength and will become a permanent fixture in the cultural life of Bedford.
The reviewer was gifted tickets to facilitate this review.
