After a sold-out, five-star run on the 2024 Edinburgh Pageant Fringe, Wyld Girl: 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 girl getting ready for her celebration by rehearsing imaginary conversations—full with index playing cards—in a determined try to keep away from social disaster. Alongside the best way, she transforms into ten wildly totally 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 transferring
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 carry Shy Lady her dream dwelling.
To kick issues off, may you introduce your self to our readers and provides us a way of what Wyld Girl: The Legend of Shy Lady is all about? What sparked the thought and pulled you towards creating this piece?
Hello! I’m Isabel, and I’m a author and performer from New York Metropolis. Wyld Girl: The Legend of Shy Lady is my solo present that follows the titular Shy Lady’s try to develop into cool, fascinating, and skilled. Sadly, her solely pal—other than 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 woman in all the world. Apparently, I didn’t communicate my total first 12 months of elementary college, and I’ve solely made incremental developments in my social abilities ever since. In all seriousness, although, I’ve all the time felt fairly embarrassed by how intensely I expertise social anxiousness. I’ve tried pushing it down and hiding it, and that’s by no means precisely helped. Wyld Girl 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 may 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 track and dance (slight spoiler alert).
Humor can minimize deep like a scalpel and defend like a defend—and it appears to be your most pure language. Why did comedy really feel like the fitting car for Shy Lady’s story? Or was it, in some methods, the one voice she may communicate 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 means 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 model of storytelling, and what does it permit you to seize about Shy Lady’s internal 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 once I’m cloaked within the impenetrable armor of an eccentric character. At first 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 means, I may hold the analysis mild.
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 snug with). The personas are all superbly weird as a result of Shy Lady’s tackle the world is kind of superbly 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 permits me to play with these chameleonic fast adjustments, that are my favourite issues ever. The viewers is nearly fully 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 intently with director Cameron King in shaping the piece. What did that collaboration carry out—whether or not in tone, construction, or efficiency—that you simply 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 growing the present with me, and all of the funniest and most memorable elements of the present have come from her. She is hilarious and intuitive, and is aware of the way to elevate a seemingly random second into one thing completely iconic. The Blowjob Ballet? All her thought. (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 essentially the most memorable response you’ve obtained from somebody who noticed themselves in Shy Lady?
Oh my God, it’s been so cathartic. I’ve carried out it for strangers, household, mates, 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 individuals 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 as we speak. I cried just a few instances and felt an important sense of kinship.” That made me cry just a few instances and really feel an important sense of kinship. I feel what was so fantastic about Edinburgh was discovering how individuals of all totally different demographics associated to it—how even a 60-year-old man can have an internal 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 developed with every new viewers? And what does this Southwark Playhouse debut characterize for you?
The earliest iterations of Wyld Girl had been at these very unconventional areas round New York. These set-ups confirmed us how essential it was to immerse the viewers in the entire motion (i.e., Shy Lady makes an attempt to lose her virginity on a desk stuffed 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 subject of inspiration. It was an opportunity to witness these magnificent, distinctive artists and belong to a group—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 Honest Girl. When she fantasizes about her lackluster American crush, she offers him a British accent. She thinks intercourse must really feel like a lustful look throughout a Downton Abbey dinner desk. It appears like each a miracle and essentially the most plain factor on the planet to be taking Shy Lady to her dream dwelling.
Shy Lady longs for the basic badges of “cool”—intercourse, cigarettes, new mates. Had been you satirizing these cultural myths, or reflecting your personal relationship with them? And has your thought of “cool” shifted over time?
I used to be undoubtedly 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 individuals. It was as if these Cool Folks had obtained some form of guide with directions on advancing additional and additional up the ladder of adolescent debauchery. And this guide 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 assume I nonetheless have this unconscious need for individuals to suppose I’m extra skilled than I’m — though my baby-deer-like disposition most likely precludes anybody from believing that I used to be doing Molly at age twelve or had a triple-digit physique rely by age twenty. However my definition of cool has completely shifted over time. I used to suppose being cool meant being common 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 weak. 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 anxiousness, the thoughts turns into a form of hidden stage—rehearsed conversations, personal rituals, imagined companions. Has that internal life felt extra like a burden, or a supply of artistic energy for you?
Inside life is my final refuge. As a baby, I might repeatedly retreat into imaginary worlds; I did so virtually compulsively. However once I look again on it now, I notice I might enterprise inwards at instances of heightened loneliness. It’s a real love of a coping mechanism. This deep connection to internal life has made creativity not solely my pleasure, however my sustenance — daily-bread-type vitality. (Sorry, that was bizarre.)
For many who acknowledge themselves in Shy Lady, what have you ever discovered about turning shyness right into a power? Are there small acts of braveness you’d genuinely suggest?
I significantly suppose shy individuals are essentially the most treasured individuals on the planet. I don’t even have good phrases to articulate it. It’s similar to, “Woah, you’re so treasured, I really like you.” I feel that’s my suggestion. When you think about the shyest a part of your self as a tiny pet or the cutest four-year-old child in all the world and say, “Woah, you’re so treasured, I really like you” — I really feel like that might assist. Additionally, write a present about being shy for…
And at last—trying forward, what sorts of tales or themes are you most desirous to discover subsequent?
I’m being drawn towards some form of story in regards to the seek for unconditional love and the divine, and transcending this mortal kind. And one thing a couple of travelling carnival. Additionally, maybe a villain origin story. Clearly, I’m understanding some bizarre stuff in my unconscious.
E-book 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 Girl: 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!
