Boob Cruise - a comedy on breast cancer screening

by Right Lines Productions in Alves, Scotland, United Kingdom

We did it
On 17th August 2021 we successfully raised £3,705 ( + est. £631.25 Gift Aid ) with 127 supporters in 28 days

Six Bosom Buddies. One life-changing journey. Help us bring Boob Cruise to stages across Scotland.

by Right Lines Productions in Alves, Scotland, United Kingdom

 New stretch target

Our intention is to stage and tour a production of this play which in the long term will cost considerably more than this development funding. With the development behind us we would approach Creative Scotland at which time partnership funding from other sources will be incredibly useful in securing their assistance. 

We will also donate 20% of any funds raised over our £2,500 target to the charity www.breastcanceruk.org.uk


Boob Cruise takes a light-hearted look at a serious decision - a woman’s choice to go for breast cancer screening.  

It’s no laughing matter, until now.

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What inspired us?

Boob Cruise began when everyone laughed at the idea that women on the Isle of Eigg charter a boat to go to a breast screening clinic on the mainland. They call it the Boob Cruise. 

People laugh at the word “boob” and that a gang of women make something so very intimate into a public day out, full of craic and camaraderie, coffee and cake. 

Inspired by that journey, Right Lines are developing Boob Cruise, a new play we hope will tour Scotland in 2022. We want to screen a rehearsed reading of our draft script to get people's feedback on the play, and need your help to make it happen.

Boob Cruise isn't a play about Eigg. Boob Cruise is about the journey all women aged 50 to 70 make from their breast screening invitation to getting their results. Usually it's a journey made alone - get invite, turn up, have boobs squashed and go. 

1626770169_lego_pic_cropp.jpegMost women are given the all clear. But there's a niggling feeling that those minutes spent having your breasts squished could mean life won't ever be the same again. What happens then?

In Boob Cruise, our women are literally in the same boat, a unique and believable setting for the screen-or-not-screen decision to be shared together.  

Where's the drama in breast screening?

NHS information says there are risks as well as benefits of screening. These risks and benefits mean that, for some women, the decision to go for breast screening can feel confusing, isolating and scary. With Boob Cruise we want to explore this decision with everyone, not just women invited for breast screening.  

Screening saves about 1 life from breast cancer for every 200 UK women who are screened, that’s about 1,300 lives saved from breast cancer each year.    

1626046355_this_size.jpgAfter screening, most women are given a negative, or all clear, result.

1 in 25 women are called back, 6 of whom will be diagnosed positive with breast cancer.

Each year 4,000 women screened in the UK are diagnosed with a cancer that would never have been found without screening and that would never have been life threatening.  

This means, for every 1 woman who has her life saved from breast cancer, about 3 women are diagnosed and offered treatment for a cancer that would never have become life threatening*.

Remember, it's a comedy!

Thanks to Dainis Graveris for this image from UnsplashBefore we get too serious, it's time to remind you it's a comedy!

Six feisty island women set sail on the Boob Cruise, their worries hidden by fun and banter.

Kathleen’s the organised one, she got the boat hired while Alison was out badgering everyone to go. Despite being over 70, Maggie will NOT be left out. But her best buddy Robina almost stayed home.

Know-it-all-Bridgit has never been screened before. Meanwhile young Carrie’s hitched a ride just to get a haircut!  Terry the skipper’s got his boat full as he charts a course to the mainland…

Over the real-time duration of a boat ride, Boob Cruise will explore the complexity of the decision each Boob Cruiser has made. The characters and conversation reveal a deep and often humorous look into a normally private world, where choices and their consequences can mean life or death.

We have a draft script and want to test it out in an exclusive online rehearsed reading to be screened on 1st October, the first day of this year's Breast Cancer Awareness month. 

We need your help to raise the £2,500 to make the screening of that rehearsed reading possible and so kick start the next stage of this exciting project. 

Why do we need a rehearsed reading of a draft script?

Audience feedback from rehearsed readings of our earlier plays has been incredibly valuable. Hearing the characters voices out loud instead of just on a page adds to the writing process. Feedback from an audience helps make the final script clearer, funnier, better able to hit the spot and create a great experience for audiences. 

Image of Stress Fibers and Microtubules in Human Breast Cancer Cells. Created by Christina Stuelten, Carole Parent, 2011 Unsplash
For Boob Cruise we want to be sure that in using humour to explore this sensitive and personal decision, we’ve got the balance right.

We also need to be sure we’re not misleading people; these are important decisions and we need to get the facts and science right.

So as well you, our crowdfunder public supporters, the exclusive rehearsed reading will also be shared with the health professionals we’ve been working with, to ensure that (with some dramatic licence!) Boob Cruise is truthful.

The rehearsed reading will be shown online at 8pm on Friday 1st October.  The hour long show will be followed by a Q&A session with the creative team, and some of the actors.  Afterwards we'll ask everyone who's seen the screening to tell us what they think.

With your feedback we will then produce a final script and start our plans to bring Boob Cruise to stages big and small across Scotland.

Who's involved?

Lucy Conway: Eigg resident and Boob Cruise originator and producer. 

1626023253_09jannicahoney_40%25.jpg“I went on my first Boob Cruise in 2014, never questioning going to the mobile breast screening unit when it came to Mallaig wasn’t the right thing to do. Besides, it was a great excuse for a girls’ day out.  Fellow islander Sue joked that the whole trip would make a great play. Three years later I put a proposal to the National Theatre of Scotland to develop a play to encourage more women to do as I’d done; go and get screened.  With support from NTS’s Starter for Ten programme, I then approached Right Lines writers Euan and Dave to add their talent for writing popular issue-based comedy so loved by audiences across Scotland, but particularly  the Highlands and Islands.  

We spoke with breast cancer specialists, health behaviour psychologists, and the women who run the breast screening service. Their varying perspectives and huge experience were immensely helpful. We started to change direction! 

Headline public health information is primarily targeted at the 25% of women who don’t go for screening for fear of pain, discomfort or embarrassment.  

Like me, many who get their invitation to screening don’t read accompanying leaflet that explains the risks and benefits closely enough – we just trust screening is best and head out to get our breasts squeezed inelegantly between two x-ray plates. 

However, as we researched further, we discovered a growing debate around the need and efficacy of screening. We spoke to women living in different parts of the Highlands and Islands to find out how they felt about breast cancer screening. What they thought about the idea of going, why they might not, what screening feels like, and what’s like waiting for the results. 

Gradually the idea of Boob Cruise moved from sharing the overriding public health message, to the more complex waters of how each woman reaches the best decision for themselves.”

Euan Martin and Dave Smith: Right Lines Productions

Right Lines Productions is run by writers Euan Martin and Dave Smith. Right Lines has a long history of writing popular and entertaining comedy theatre, shows such The Accidental Death of an Accordionist, Who Bares Wins, Whisky Kisses, Rapid Departure, and most recently, The Isle of Love.

1626769584_e&d.jpgEuan

"Lucy floated the idea of Right Lines writing a comedy called Boob Cruise when Right Lines rehearsed and opened our climate change comedy Rapid Departure on the Isle of Eigg in 2015. My initial reaction was to laugh out loud – was she suggesting Right Lines should chart a course into the murky waters of adult entertainment?   

We all know someone – family members, friends, colleagues – who have had direct experience of breast cancer. However, I was less aware of the issues surrounding mammography and frankly, I had never considered there was an option “to screen, or not to screen.” 

Dave

"When Lucy first suggested Boob Cruise as a play I was immediately engaged. Dramatically, the idea of a community of women heading off together on a small boat for their mammogram appointments, was exciting. It was the perfect context to delve into personal stories and characters, and openly discuss breast cancer screening from a variety of viewpoints.  

With the experience of Eigg's women as inspiration, Boob Cruise had the potential for all the usual elements of humour and pathos that we like to include in Right Lines shows.  All this, and happy associations with Eigg, meant I was onboard with the idea from the very beginning."

With support from Playwrights' Studio, Scotland, Dave and Euan wrote the draft script in Sweeney's Bothy on Eigg. 

A FEW WORDS FROM THE CAST 

Seven of Scotland’s best loved actors have agreed to present our online rehearsed reading.  This is what they think of the idea and the draft script. 

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What your support will pay for

It will cost £2,500 to create and screen a rehearsed reading of Boob Cruise.  The £2,500 will be used to: 

  • contract seven professional actors to rehearse and perform the reading 
  • record an online rehearsed reading of the play
  • present the rehearsed reading exclusively to our Crowdfunder supporters and an invited audience of specialist breast cancer health professionals, arts promoters and theatre professionals on 1st October 2021
  • following the rehearsed reading, present an online Q&A session with the creative team and some of the actors
  • collect and collate feedback from our Crowdfunder supporters, our health and theatre professionals
  • incorporate your feedback into a final version of the Boob Cruise script
  • edit and distribute extracts of the rehearsed reading of Boob Cruise to help raise funding for a full-scale touring production of Boob Cruise and to share with theatres and village hall promoters to secure bookings.

If we raise more than £2,500 we will 

  • use it as match funding in an application to Creative Scotland to tour Boob Cruise round Scotland's theatres and village halls 

and

  • donate 20% of any excess to the charity www.breastcanceruk.org.uk

* https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/breast-cancer-screening/why-its-offered/

Rewards

This project offers rewards in return for your donation. Please select a reward below.

£20 or more

19 of 100 claimed

Level Two

A link to the rehearsed reading, the following Q&A session and an invite to tell us what you think and help make Boob Cruise even better AND... your name listed in the credits of the reading.

£10 or more

10 of 50 claimed

Level One

A link to the rehearsed reading, the following Q&A session and an invite to tell us what you think and help make Boob Cruise even better.

£50 or more

9 of 50 claimed

Level Three

A link to the rehearsed reading, the following Q&A session and an invite to tell us what you think and help make Boob Cruise even better AND... your name listed in the credits of the reading AND... a copy of the draft and final script signed by the playwrights.

£100 or more

1 of 20 claimed

Level Four

A link to the rehearsed reading, the following Q&A session and an invite to tell us what you think and help make Boob Cruise even better AND... your name listed in the credits of the reading AND... a copy of the draft and final script signed by the playwrights AND... a one to one opportunity to meet with the creative team online to talk about how the project came about and give your feedback in person.

£500 or more

0 of 1 claimed

Level Five: Exclusive Corporate Sponsor

All of the above AND the video of the reading will be branded with your Company Name and Logo in the titles and credits before distribution.

£1,000 or more

0 of 1 claimed

Level Six: Eigg-clusive week to relax or write!

All of the above AND a week's holiday for 2 in Sweeney's Bothy on Isle of Eigg, from July 23 to 30, 2022. Eigg is where Boob Cruise started and the first draft of the play was written in Sweeney's Bothy. Whether you want to simply relax or write your own play, it's a very special reward. If 23-30 July, 2022 doesn't suit, the 7 days can be moved to another available week. Reward does not include Level 5 brand sponsorship.

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