Cat Gerrard

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Cat is an English-Polish performance-maker and storyteller, based in Berlin.

 

Her parents travelled the world before settling in a “pleasant riverside town” (as her Mum’s job description generously put it; otherwise known as the London suburb of Teddington). The only thing of note that ever happened in Teddington is that Monty Python filmed the Fish Slapping Dance down at said “pleasant riverside”. Cat grew up in Teddington and later moved to the centre of town, until London pushed her and Berlin pulled her.

 

Epic pushes and pulls and journeys are in her blood, like most of us.

 

Her grandparents escaped to England from Poland. Her Grandfather and his friend – both pilots – jumped into an airplane as their airbase came under attack. They flew away from Poland under fire. It was the outbreak of the Second World War. Arriving in British airspace, they came under fire for a second time; they spoke no English and the British, knowing of the occupation of Poland, thought they were German soldiers and that it was a trick. Eventually they made themselves understood and were allowed to land, for the first time, in England.  

 

Cat’s own descent to Berlin was, thankfully, less outwardly dramatic. The first time she visited Berlin she had her heart broken. The second time she visited, she fell in love. She moved there in 2015, following her heart and her profession, studying at devised, performance-making school LISPA, itself recently moved from London. In Berlin, Cat has met many incredible fellow travellers, with their own epic journeys, both inner and outer.

 

Cat now teaches at LISPA and continues her creative projects in Berlin and elsewhere. She thinks that stories find us, grow inside us and flow through us, some of them mythic, some of them ancestral.

 

The angel found Cat, to both of their great delight and surprise, in 2015. They have been journeying together ever since.

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www.catgerrard.com