An Interview with Nicole Palomba

The Lambeth Fringe is approaching, & the voices of storytellers shall be heard

Can you tell us where you’re from, & where you are living today?
I am from Jackson Hole, Wyoming which is in the Rocky Mountains near Yellowstone National Park. Now it’s apparently quite the trendy destination, but when I was growing up, it was still a western small town. Currently I am a canal boat nomad, so you can usually find me floating around the River Lea somewhere.

When did you first realise you were theatrical?
Well, I was born 6 weeks early, so I suppose from the beginning lol. My first memory is telling stories to my toys- so I must have been about 4? A friend of my mother’s had sent a folding theatre- like a punch and Judy style fold out with a clock on the front- to us from Switzerland (which might as well have been the moon to a small town kid) and I loved it. It’s how I learned to tell time, so I could know to set the “showtime” clock to about 5 minutes from whenever I had the impulse to give a story. I also remember the first time I made a group of grown-ups laugh. It was Christmas at my godmother’s house and I was about five. I was imitating my parents stepping on a Barbie shoe while they were trying to hoover… I think it was game over after that.

Can you tell us more about your family’s tradition of storytelling?
In all honesty, I don’t know much. My mother grew up in an orphanage in NYC, so what we have are bits and pieces from what her and my aunties remember from before they were there. My mother had a radio show when I was growing up called “Imagine That,” where she would tell stories over the air in the mornings so kids could have something to listen to on the way to school in the car. This led to her travelling around schools, libraries, community centres in the area telling stories with puppets she made and voices. My auntie was a talk radio DJ in New York as well and was on an episode of Reading Rainbow. Her publicity allowed her to open doors for other Latinas and women of colour in the New York radio and music community…we’re all very active and connected to lifting people up through our work. We are oral storytellers…passing the myths of our communities on word by word…generation by generation. Most of the stories have a healing meaning, or lesson…I’ve taken this one step further as I have felt called in the past several years more into traditions I am teaching myself through the diaspora about the way words can- and have- healed many many people in many many ways throughout time and Latina culture.

Can you tell us about your training?
I was trained on the MFA Acting International course at E15 under Robin Sneller and Tracy Collier. I have always looked up to Joan Littlewood- a rumoured boat woman herself- and I deeply respect theatre that carries a message. My time at E15 was a self professed love affair with the craft. It was (and still is) deeply focused on research based and character-centric acting and character building. We honour the character’s story above our need to be witnessed, and this time spent in the woods out in Essex gave me a chance to open myself up to the possibilities the body is capable of in terms of allowing character into the self, and into the forefront of the process.

You’ve got three famous actors/actresses (dead or alive) coming round for dinner. Who would they be & what would you cook; starters, mains & dessert?
Love this question! 3 famous actors on a narrowboat for dinner sounds like the beginning of a potentially great joke…I would have Rita Moreno, Pina Bausch, and Jim Henson over in the hopes that we would just laugh. I would do towpath picky bits at sunset…picnic style Mexican street food with homemade tortillas, pico de Gallo, fresh elote…maybe some fish tacos to be cute. Dessert I’d have to break the theme though and make carrot cake. Boat-grown carrots are something else.

You’re bringing a show to this year’s Lambeth Fringe, what are you adding to the table?
Water. And by that I suppose I mean vulnerability and an openness that I hope people need. This show isn’t really a show, it’s more a story. There are very few bells and whistles…the lights are up, the words are true…there is ritual and magic and an ancient feeling of gathering around and sitting at the feet of an elder that I know is important to my creative practice, but has become very lost in the hustle-grind-everything-is-content wake of creating in the 21st century. So yeah…water…and slowness…gentleness if you will.

Where, when, & why were you inspired to create the piece?
The piece came to me. I was accepted to an arts residency at Santa Rosa Arts and Healing in Canada this summer called Agua Viva. I had no business applying as I am not a fine artist, but something told me to apply. The residency is all about water as – life. I am astrologically (if you believe in that sort of thing) and very very much when you meet me it’s clear- all water. I wear my heart on my sleeve and have done for my whole life- which I’m sure you can imagine has left me high and dry and worn out more times than I can count. But this past 2 years I was drowning in mental health and physical health challenges that culminated in a miscarriage in late 2023…it wasn’t the miscarriage, but the completely unexpected grief that followed that brought me back to the waters of myself…the parts of me that carry who I am underneath it all. When I went to Canada, it was a pilgrimage back to the Rockies in a way I didn’t realise I needed. The indigenous peoples of North America call fresh water “sweet water,” which I almost named the piece. I am a sweet water person. I love story and people and feeling all the feelings…and this…physical catalyst I had with my health opened me up to the ownership of those things – my softness- my gentleness- my vulnerability and my unwavering belief in kindness- for the first time in my life. Things I’ve been picked on and told to shut out for years are now the things I wear most proudly.

What responses do you hope to invoke in your audience?
Kindness and softness and TIME. I want people to let themselves surrender into someone telling them a story. I want them to give themselves 45 minutes to just sit with me, which I hope means they will sit with themselves. I think gentleness is going out of fashion lol, so I hope people leave the show treating themselves better than they would have before they met it.

What is your last-minute routine before stepping out on stage?
I put my hand on the theatre and say thank you, and then I say to myself “stay focused, stay humble, stay blessed.” It’s the last ‘Nicole’ thought and then I go away. It’s how I let myself move out of the way for character, knowing I’ll be putting her – and therefore the story- first.

You bump into somebody in the streets of Lambeth & have 20 seconds to sell your show – what do you say?
I would ask them when was the last time someone told them a story? When was the last time they told someone a story? I’d say this is a 45 minute ode to storytelling as a healing. It’s about how water can cure anything…and we are all made of water. So the answers, the balm, it’s all us.

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