Anoushka Lucas on returning to her solo show 'Elephant' for a third time

Anoushka Lucas returns to the London stage with her solo show Elephant about colonialism and healing through music.

Anoushka Lucas has built a remarkable theatre career — though it began by chance. “I came through the side door without realising,” she says. At 22, she was a gigging musician struggling to make ends meet.

Playwright Ché Walker saw her perform and suggested her songs suited theatre. They collaborated on Kloot’s Last Stand in 2014, with Lucas writing the score. Then, while composing the music for a show at Theatre Royal Stratford East she was asked by a casting director — why aren’t you on stage? “The idea I could be an actor was so beyond me,” she says.

A decade on, Lucas’s credits include Henry V opposite Kit Harington and A Face in the Crowd, with Ramin Karimloo. She now returns to the stage with her solo show Elephant at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

What is Elephant about?

I like to call Elephant political autofiction. It’s a two-hander between myself and a piano, and it's about the legacy of colonialism in the British middle classes. The way that my character Lyla understands that is by realising where her piano comes from. As she pulls apart the materials that made her piano and the legacy of colonialism in all of those materials, the more she starts to pull apart why she feels different and uncomfortable in the white British middle-class spaces that she's moving through. The show is also a love letter to music and the healing space of making songs.

Elephant is really autobiographical. During the Black Lives Matter movement, I read Afua Hirsch, I read Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. Those books come from a place of lived experience. I never felt that I was able to speak about racism because I'm so privileged, but in not talking about it, I silently upheld the idea that racism doesn't exist outside of working-class spaces. [I had to stand on that stage and] say, “I have the authority to talk about this. Here's my experience.”

Outgoing Bush Theatre artistic director Lynette Linton originally commissioned Elephant. What was it like working with her and associate artistic director Daniel Bailey?

Lynette Linton was key to holding the autobiography. I started writing it and a lot of stuff poured out, but then I got really blocked. Lynette said, "You have to change the character's name and you have to release her from yourself."

The Bush under Lynette and Daniel has been a revolutionary building. They have extraordinary foresight and a gift for identifying people who need some nurturing. It's very intimidating finding yourself exposed in an industry where you don't have the training tools to back yourself up, and I was someone who needed that nurturing.

How does it feel revisiting Elephant for a third time?

I wrote Lyla in my early thirties and based her on my late twenties. Now I’m in my late thirties and it’s amazing how different I feel to the person that I’ve created. Having to go back through all the permutations of yourself and find a version that can work now is really difficult, but also fascinating.

Have you got any other projects on the go?

I just launched a fundraiser to make my second album and hit my target in four hours, which is unbelievable. I’ve recorded 12 new tracks with my band and it means I can spend a couple of months this summer in the studio. So after a six year hiatus, I hope to put a new album out. Elephant is about making it in the music industry, which I grieved after my last album — I thought I’d never make a record again. The timing feels cosmic. In many ways, the show has healed me.

Book Elephant tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

This article first appeared in the June 2025 issue of London Theatre Magazine.

Photo credit: Lucas in Elephant. (Photo courtesy of production)