After a sold-out, five-star run on the 2024 Edinburgh Competition Fringe, Wyld Lady: The Legend of Shy Lady arrives in London for its extremely anticipated Southwark Playhouse Borough debut (23 October – 15 November 2025). Written and carried out by Isabel Renner and directed by Cameron King, the solo comedy has already been hailed as “a love letter to anybody who has ever believed the horrible lie that they don’t seem to be cool sufficient.”
The present follows Shy Lady, a socially anxious younger lady getting ready for her birthday celebration by rehearsing imaginary conversations—full with index playing cards—in a determined try and keep away from social disaster. Alongside the best way, she transforms into ten wildly completely different characters, from a six-year-old therapist to the paranormal Vagina Goddess, revealing the absurd, poignant, and deeply human layers of shyness, longing, and self-acceptance, and audiences have embraced it as each hilariously irreverent and unexpectedly shifting
Forward of Shy Lady’s London debut, we sat down with Isabel Renner to speak about comedy as survival, the evolution of the present, and what it means to lastly deliver Shy Lady her dream residence.
To kick issues off, might you introduce your self to our readers and provides us a way of what Wyld Lady: The Legend of Shy Lady is all about? What sparked the concept and pulled you towards creating this piece?
Hello! I’m Isabel, and I’m a author and performer from New York Metropolis. Wyld Lady: The Legend of Shy Lady is my solo present that follows the titular Shy Lady’s try and grow to be cool, fascinating, and skilled. Sadly, her solely buddy—apart from her densely populated imaginary clique—is her therapist, who is definitely only a six-year-old for whom she babysits.
I began writing the present to reckon with feeling just like the shyest lady in the whole world. Apparently, I didn’t converse my complete first 12 months of elementary faculty, and I’ve solely made incremental developments in my social abilities ever since. In all seriousness, although, I’ve at all times felt fairly embarrassed by how intensely I expertise social nervousness. I’ve tried pushing it down and hiding it, and that’s by no means precisely helped. Wyld Lady has been a possibility to truly categorical it and settle for it—by way of legend, of all mediums: the theatre.
Shy Lady feels without delay deeply private and immediately recognizable. How a lot of her is drawn from your personal experiences, and the way a lot is invention or imagined as an alter-ego?
Shy Lady actually stemmed from my very own life, however she’s grown right into a sweeter, purer, gentler creature all her personal. I began writing to her from a spot of disgrace, and solely years later have I spotted that I might solely dream to be as optimistic and tender and ‘Wyld’ a girl as she is. She’s mythic in her Brontë-sister-level eager for real love, in addition to in her passionate makes an attempt at tune and dance (slight spoiler alert).
Humor can lower deep like a scalpel and shield like a defend—and it appears to be your most pure language. Why did comedy really feel like the appropriate car for Shy Lady’s story? Or was it, in some methods, the one voice she might converse in?
GORGEOUS QUESTION! Pardon me whereas I weep. Okay, I’m again! 😀
I really feel like this has been my life’s very riddle. Ever since I used to be little, humor has been a manner for me to each reveal and conceal myself. However I feel, for Shy Lady, it’s not how she hides — it’s simply what emerges from her pure and hilarious coronary heart. Humor is in the end Shy Lady’s loveliest high quality. She’s so fixated on how shy and loser-ish and unloved she thinks she is that she doesn’t even discover how epically, powerfully humorous she has been all alongside.
All through the efficiency, you slip between numerous characters, voices, and views. How did you develop this multi-layered type of storytelling, and what does it assist you to seize about Shy Lady’s interior world?
I’m obsessive about doing characters. That’s how I fell in love with performing within the first place. I don’t suppose I’ve ever felt safer than after I’m cloaked within the impenetrable armor of an eccentric character. Firstly of the pandemic, I began developing with these ridiculous characters and recording movies of myself as them. Then I needed to weave them right into a narrative — and what narrative do I do know higher than a story of socially awkward late-bloomerhood? That manner, I might preserve the analysis gentle.
The roles these characters play in Shy Lady’s world are impressed by moments from my very own life, profoundly exaggerated for dramatic impact: hiding from my roommate by going to mattress when the solar remains to be out; cowering within the face of my scary boss; chasing gynecologists round city to repair my challenge of being bodily unable to lose my virginity to a person I used to be in love with (a.ok.a. didn’t really feel remotely comfy with). The personas are all fantastically weird as a result of Shy Lady’s tackle the world is kind of fantastically weird.
You additionally selected to hold it alone onstage. How did you land on the solo format over ensemble, and what helps you maintain the bodily and emotional depth evening after evening?
I used to be too shy to ask anybody else to be in it with me! Simply kidding—form of. I used to be drawn to the shape due to my love of character work. It allows me to play with these chameleonic fast adjustments, that are my favourite issues ever. The viewers is nearly solely what helps me maintain the depth of carrying it alone. The viewers is the magic elixir that actually brings the present to life. They’re Shy Lady’s counsel, and their assist retains her (and me) going.
You labored carefully with director Cameron King in shaping the piece. What did that collaboration deliver out—whether or not in tone, construction, or efficiency—that you just may not have found by yourself?
Cameron is the opposite magic elixir that has introduced the present to life. She and I met at LaGuardia Excessive Faculty in New York Metropolis, the place we had been, respectively, two very cool and really uncool thirteen-year-olds. She has spent the previous three years creating the present with me, and all of the funniest and most memorable features of the present have come from her. She is hilarious and intuitive, and is aware of learn how to elevate a seemingly random second into one thing completely iconic. The Blowjob Ballet? All her concept. (If that piques your curiosity, do come and see the present!)
The present has been described as “a love letter to anybody who’s ever believed they’re not cool sufficient.” Has performing it felt cathartic for you? And what’s probably the most memorable response you’ve acquired from somebody who noticed themselves in Shy Lady?
Oh my God, it’s been so cathartic. I’ve carried out it for strangers, household, pals, crushes, enemies, elders, and people to whom I’m an elder. And the viewers is closely concerned within the present. Direct eye contact is sustained (how’s that for shy?). It has been so releasing to look all these folks within the eye and form of proclaim, “Yeah, that is who I’m,” and be met with a lot encouragement and laughter and acceptance.
I’ve gotten such affirming responses. Somebody in Edinburgh messaged me after a present, telling me all about their experiences feeling shy and alone. They ended the message with, “Thanks for in the present day. I cried just a few occasions and felt an excellent sense of kinship.” That made me cry just a few occasions and really feel an excellent sense of kinship. I feel what was so great about Edinburgh was discovering how folks of all completely different demographics associated to it—how even a 60-year-old man can have an interior Shy Lady.
And now Shy Lady is touring—actually. From barns and taco basements to New York, Edinburgh, and now London, how has the piece advanced with every new viewers? And what does this Southwark Playhouse debut characterize for you?
The earliest iterations of Wyld Lady had been at these very unconventional areas round New York. These set-ups confirmed us how important it was to immerse the viewers in all the motion (i.e., Shy Lady makes an attempt to lose her virginity on a desk filled with seated patrons). This was the place we honed in on the piece’s juxtaposition—telling a narrative about this intensely timid woman who’s doing all these intensely un-timid issues in actual time.
Edinburgh was this celestial discipline of inspiration. It was an opportunity to witness these magnificent, distinctive artists and belong to a neighborhood—Shy Lady’s deepest want. However London. Oh, London. Nobody loves the English like Shy Lady. Her most romantic reminiscence is a scene from My Truthful Girl. When she fantasizes about her lackluster American crush, she provides him a British accent. She thinks intercourse must really feel like a lustful look throughout a Downton Abbey dinner desk. It looks like each a miracle and probably the most plain factor on the planet to be taking Shy Lady to her dream residence.
Shy Lady longs for the basic badges of “cool”—intercourse, cigarettes, new pals. Have been you satirizing these cultural myths, or reflecting your personal relationship with them? And has your concept of “cool” shifted over time?
I used to be positively extra reflecting by myself difficult relationship with them. I used to be so ashamed of how late-bloomer-y I felt all through highschool and faculty. I related having intercourse and smoking and consuming and drugging (that may be a verb, proper?) with capital-C Cool folks. It was as if these Cool Folks had acquired some kind of handbook with directions on advancing additional and additional up the ladder of adolescent debauchery. And this handbook had in some way missed my doorstep — or I had missed the supply whereas inventing comparatively chaste love tales in my head, or visiting the orthodontist, or no matter different less-than-cool pastime I used to be as much as again then.
I suppose I nonetheless have this unconscious need for folks to suppose I’m extra skilled than I’m — though my baby-deer-like disposition in all probability precludes anybody from believing that I used to be doing Molly at age twelve or had a triple-digit physique depend by age twenty. However my definition of cool has completely shifted over time. I used to suppose being cool meant being widespread in class and smoking cigarettes out of aesthetic necessity. Now I feel nearly everybody I’ve ever met is fairly cool. I imply, being a human is… like… humiliatingly susceptible. And we’re all getting up and strolling down the road and attempting to attach regardless of that. To me, that’s about as cool because it will get.
For many individuals with social nervousness, the thoughts turns into a form of hidden stage—rehearsed conversations, non-public rituals, imagined companions. Has that interior life felt extra like a burden, or a supply of inventive energy for you?
Interior life is my final refuge. As a toddler, I’d repeatedly retreat into imaginary worlds; I did so nearly compulsively. However after I look again on it now, I understand I’d enterprise inwards at occasions of heightened loneliness. It’s a real love of a coping mechanism. This deep connection to interior life has made creativity not solely my pleasure, however my sustenance — daily-bread-type vitality. (Sorry, that was bizarre.)
For individuals who acknowledge themselves in Shy Lady, what have you ever realized about turning shyness right into a power? Are there small acts of braveness you’d genuinely advocate?
I significantly suppose shy persons are probably the most valuable folks on the planet. I don’t even have good phrases to articulate it. It’s identical to, “Woah, you might be so valuable, I really like you.” I feel that’s my advice. Should you think about the shyest a part of your self as a tiny pet or the cutest four-year-old child in the whole world and say, “Woah, you might be so valuable, I really like you” — I really feel like that may assist. Additionally, write a present about being shy for…
And eventually—wanting forward, what sorts of tales or themes are you most wanting to discover subsequent?
I’m being drawn towards some kind of story concerning the seek for unconditional love and the divine, and transcending this mortal type. And one thing a few travelling carnival. Additionally, maybe a villain origin story. Clearly, I’m understanding some bizarre stuff in my unconscious.
Ebook your tickets now at Southwark Playhouse earlier than Shy Lady takes her closing bow!
That was our dialog with Isabel Renner on the wit, chaos, and coronary heart behind Wyld Lady: The Legend of Shy Lady. Share your ideas with us on X/Twitter and Instagram, and uncover extra unique interviews and options over at CelebMix!
