Today I realised I had been saving up all of my needles, tags and empty cartridges in a sharps bin. I was going to empty this bin on stage to show just how many needles and bits and bobs I have to do, and explain that this is the amount just from February to May so 3 months worth of needles. I then calculated that I have done over 36,000 blood tests since I was diagnosed. I think that number is impacting enough without showing the literal amount of needles on stage. Plus there would be health and safety precautions.

I’ve always had the idea of levels as a key idea I just wasn’t sure how to show this in a performance visually. I then created what looked like charts of my levels rising and falling, almost like a heart monitor screen as well. I however wasn’t sure that these tags would stand out enough on the studio floor and so I then thought about how I could create something that could hang up across the stage.

Developing the ‘Levels’ visual

Going from one end of the scale to another and my life being a balancing act i decided to try using literal numbers rather than small tags. The numbers 0-30 is what my machine tells me. Anything above 30 it just read HI which means i’m completely off the scale! I wanted to create sugar cube boxes but 1 i realised this would take too much time and 2 i was already using the songs about sugar to confuse the audience about what it is diabetes really involves when they enter the space. It is not sugar. It is carbs. As i was looking for card in the shop i then spotted paper plates, they were nice and cheap, i eat everyday, everyone eats off plates, they can have any type of food eaten off of them.

I then threaded string through them all and went to the studio to test how to hang them… they weren’t noticable on the floor again which I was worried about, so i tried pegging them to the curtain and i liked the way the numbers dipped in the middle showing the fall and rise of my levels. I then kept re adjusting them so they were equal distance apart, without realising it i had formed a production line. my job was to keep adjusting the number plates, like i do to my sugar levels day in day out.