Interview: Sammy Trotman - mad activist, theatre maker & writer/performer of ‘THAT’S NOT MY NAME’

Hey Sammy! What's your story?

My name's Sammy Trotman and I’m a mad activist and a theatre maker; I’m the writer and performer of a one-person, multi-personality show called ‘THAT'S NOT MY NAME’ which I’ve been touring the UK with my team for the last four years. 

I use the arts to forward my political opinions about psychiatry…and also all the other problems in the world.

I loved performing when I was younger - loved theatres, being on stage, loved being the centre of attention when I was a kid. I got into drama school when I was 19, and I spent 6 months there but because of this (tapping her head) I couldn’t carry on with it.

So I left drama school and from 19 to 27 I never touched it - when you love something so much, you either do it all or not at all, and I was denying myself of it…until I wrote this. 

Since then I’ve been writing and creating characters, and it’s been really amazing to find myself as a self-devising, autonomous creative who one day might want to be the manager of a pub but the next might want to write a play and test it out at a scratch night. I do things that way instead of calling myself a performer and artist all the time, because I don’t always have the capacity for it.

So how exactly did this show come about?

I originally started writing it whilst I was in a psychiatric ward in order to try and escape.  I talk out loud to myself when I’m not feeling well, and I thought: 

“‘What if I was practicing stand-up out loud to myself instead?’ 
That way the nurses would just think ‘Oh, she’s just practicing a stand-up routine, and not being crazy’”

I thought that concept was really funny so I kept hold of that whilst I was…being mad.

About two years later I got sober and this outpouring of creativity/mayhem/psychosis happened in this very beautiful way, and I wrote and wrote for weeks. I was really convinced I was a stand-up comedian at that point; I thought “I’ve nailed it”, but I’d never done it before and didn’t know what the @£$% I was doing, but I just decided to put on a show.

My best friend asked me if I really wanted to do this, and I said “Yes! I’m a genius! This is profound, scholarly work” - I genuinely believed it was incredible (laughing). 

My friend said: “I think you’re going to regret this.”

But I put on the show, and it was received really well. So I invited a load of critics to come and review it, even though it was supposed to be a work-in-progress at this point; I invited The Stage and The Guardian, and we got 4 out of 5 stars!

I thought: “Who’s laughing now?!”

What does London mean to you?

If you had asked me this 5 years ago, I would have said ‘loneliness’. Now, I’d say ‘community’, which is amazing. 

I live in this pocket of London where I’ve got about 20 very very close, dear friends and we’re always at each other’s houses - it feels very collectivist and supportive, and we’re all queer, or neurodivergent or mad. For the first time, London feels like home to me. I would never have been able to say that before because it’s quite intimidating.

Aside from community, it also means art. There’s so much free art in London - although not enough - and so much to do. Moving out of the kind of person I used to be, moving here has educated me, and opened my eyes to so many different things. This city has really fed my self worth and identity a lot. I came out as queer 2 years ago, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that without associating with queer creatives in the artistic community - this show did that.

Also, I’ve worked for the same group of pubs for 8 years now, and I do not have a friend that I haven’t met through this company - which is weird, because I’m a sober person that works in a pub!

It’s been a balance of those two things that has given me a feeling of security here finally. 

Side note: best pubs in London (in your opinion)?

The Rosemary branch, definitely. I have to say the Landseer Arms in Holloway, because it’s just my favourite pub in the world and holds a very special place in my heart.

The Duke Organic in Angel is lovely, but it’s not very pub-by, it’s more food-y. 

The Ship, on Mare Street in Hackney, is also great.

What culture is calling you?

I love fringe theatre so much; I love watching new writing because you never know what you’re going to get. Also, watching someone be vulnerable enough to put something on in the first instance is a privilege to experience. I spent A LOT of my time in 2024 at The Camden People’s Theatre; they’re my home from home when it comes to theatres - so incredibly supportive to their artists, an incredibly supportive venue, and very fair. 

I love clowning; I’ve got a friend, Ellie Brewster, who has a wonderful clown called Linda; she spends 45 minutes toying with that, she’s a beautiful clown. My friend Sami Abu-Wardeh is a Palestinian clown - he had a show recently at The Park Theatre called Peace de Resistance. He does this wonderful thing where he attacks a really serious subject - I guess that’s a clown, at the end of the day; there’s something very profound and very sad and very lonely about a person but with this facade of ‘funny’ happening - and he just nails it. He’s been a massive inspiration to me.

Anything absurd, or existential, when it comes to performance art. I’m a real fan of Marina Abramovic, obviously, because I have to be (laughing). People like Frankie Thompson, Lucy McCormack - they’ve really inspired the next show I’m writing in so far as understanding that art doesn’t have to be linear at all, and it doesn’t have to be understandable - it can just be this thing that the audience draws their own interpretation from. You don’t have to tell an audience what you’re trying to say; you just have to put something in front of them and let them do the rest. 

When I wrote ‘That’s Not My Name’, I felt like I had a lot of explaining to do because it doesn’t make me out to be the best human being ever. [That’s because] I didn't feel like the best human being ever when I wrote it. It’s not preachy but it has a lot of words in it because I had a lot to say. Maybe that’s right for that because it’s attacking quite a large-scale subject, and it felt very personal, but that approach isn’t working with other things I’m writing. 

Finally, tell us about your show, ‘THAT’S NOT MY NAME’

It’s the UK’s first fringe production of a show which opposes psychiatry head on. It opposes the diagnoses that were given to me and that are prescribed to most of the population in the west, and it does it using comedy, stand up, spoken word and a plethora of disciplines that make it very crazy and made in its nature. 

I did take the name from the song by [indie pop duo] The Ting Tings!

The show is about me decrying the Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis, along with basically every other diagnosis in the DSM - it’s me challenging and interrogating psychiatry using comedy. It doesn’t sound very funny but I can assure you that it is!

It’s also a very milky show, as well - there’s a lot of milk in it, and a lot of cream. There’s a lot of nudity, if that’s up your street. It’s really 75 minutes of total mayhem, and you will either hate me or love me by the end of it but I don’t care which one it is because it exists for the right people who need to see it and who need to feel seen in a world where the mental health care system and the scaffolding around it is being really hypocritical at the moment.

‘THAT’S NOT MY NAME' is on one last tour:

Birmingham - Old Joint Stock (4th March)
London - The Pleasance Theatre (19-21 March)
Oxford - Old Fire Station (26th March)
Newcastle - Alphabetti Theatre (8th & 9th April)
Nottingham - Nottingham Playhouse (26th June)