Jess Thom

Prior to becoming a theatre-maker and performer, Thom's career began as a playworker, working with children and young people. She has also been a fundraiser and project coordinator at a charity based in south London.[1]

In 2010, Thom and longstanding friend and collaborator Matthew Pountney co-founded Touretteshero.[15] The idea started out as a way of engaging people with the creative and humorous side of Tourette's, with Thom dressing up in a superhero costume and delivering performances and workshops, especially to children and young people. In 2011, Thom appeared on Episode 3, 'Uses and Abuses' of Stephen Fry's five-part BBC series Fry's Planet Word, to discuss her Tourette's and coprolalia - the involuntary use of swear words which 10% of people with Tourette's experience.[16][17] The following year, Souvenir Press published Welcome to Biscuit Land: A year in the life of Touretteshero based on entries on Thom's blog, for which Fry wrote the foreword.[18] Touretteshero has also put on creative events, like 'We Forgot The Lot!' - a collaboration with Tate for children and young people with and without Tourette's.[19] Touretteshero worked with the Battersea Arts Centre to help them become the world's first "relaxed venue"[20] in February 2020. This followed several relaxed performances[21] and events held there, including the Festival of Rest and Resistance[22] and Not I.[23]

Partly inspired by her negative experience of attending the Mark Thomas gig, and taking its name from Thom's most common vocal tic 'biscuit', Backstage in Biscuit Land began development as a theatre piece which explores the creative opportunities of Thom's tics and also other people's reaction to them. In 2013, Thom met performer and puppeteer, Jess Mabel Jones at a performance of Beauty and the Beast by ONEOFUS (Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz) in London.[10] Mabel Jones would later become a lead collaborator on Backstage in Biscuit Land. Mabel Jones's role in this 'one-woman show for two' is to make sure Thom doesn't stray too far off topic.[1] Due to Thom's unique and sporadic ticcing, which is riffed on heavily in the show, no two performances are quite the same. The set for the show features 50 items that were the subjects of some of Thom's spontaneous vocal tics during the development cycle, including a 'babygrow for Les Dennis' and 'ducks dressed as pterodactyls'.[1]

Backstage in Biscuit Land received R&D funding from commissioning body Unlimited,[24] but crowdfunding was sought to help bring the show to Edinburgh Fringe Festival.[1] Reviews of the initial run at Edinburgh were very positive. Lyn Gardiner in The Guardian said: "Jess Thom's condition lends her show an absurdist edge Samuel Beckett would be proud of...Tourette's and theatre make a joyous combo". She also described it as "extraordinarily entertaining" awarding it four stars.[11] Alice Jones in The Independent said: "The humour is black but it's also daft and uplifting, and in places, impossibly moving".[25] TV Bomb, were perhaps most effusive with their praise declaring: "There are more ideas and imagination in this one hour show than most of the Fringe programme combined," awarding it 5 out of 5.[26]

Following its success at Edinburgh, Backstage in Biscuit Land went on a tour across the UK throughout 2015 and 2016 including a notable performance at the Barbican, London. It continued to pick up glowing reviews with The Stage awarding it four stars and calling the show "a properly joyous thing, funny, informative, and eloquent about the need for theatre to be more accessible to everyone.[27] Broadway Baby also awarded the show 4 stars "This show is one big tasty biscuit all right".[28] Later in 2016 the production went international with a tour of North America which included performances at New York's BRIC, Toronto's Harbourfront, San Francisco's International Arts Festival and Los Angeles' Skirball Cultural Center. Performances in Australia included at the Sydney Opera House,[29] Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane and Melbourne International Festival. The performance at the latter earned the show 4 stars in the Australian edition of The Guardian, with Steph Harmon describing at as "unpredictable, joyous, must-watch theatre".[7]

Thom appeared on ITV's This Morning in May 2012 and was interviewed at length by Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby.[30] In March 2013, Thom appeared on RTE's Saturday Night Show with Brendan O'Connor. In September of that year, Thom delivered a talk about the misconceptions of Tourette's Syndrome at TEDxAlbertopolis, the first TED event to take place at London's Royal Albert Hall.[31] Following her appearance on Fry's Planet Word in 2014, Thom appeared on Radio 4's The Today Programme, discussing Tourette's and BBC News discussing her ideas about 'freedom' later that year.[32][13] In October 2015, Thom was interviewed on BBC's Russel Howard's Good News, with the broadcast apparently reaching some 3 million people.[33] The next month a version of Backstage in Biscuit Land, adapted for television entitled Broadcast from Biscuit Land had a 30-minute slot on BBC4's Live from Television Centre, the first live broadcast from Television Centre since the building was decommissioned in 2013.[34] In 2016, Thom appeared on series 10 of Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast.[35] A behind-the-scenes look at Jess Thom's experience in developing Not I was created for BBC Two, in Me, My Mouth and I.[36]