Martha Pailing
Failure To Thrive
→ artist · entry · access · about · credits · websites Updated 13 May 2025
Presented by Word of Warning + Contact in Works Ahead 2025: a double bill of new works-in-development from Martha and Adèle Le Gallez
Failure To Thrive
“Touch is the first sensory system to develop in the foetus.”
What does it mean to be held, to be nurtured, to be known?
Part-story, part-discovery, part-surrender: an investigation into touch and regression. This work unpacks the strange contradiction of being a fully grown adult who is still learning how to thrive.
Artist
Martha is a northern-born spoken word and performance artist.
Her work considers what it is to remain empathetic and soft in a brutal, emotionally temperamental world.
She is a former artist-in-residence at London’s Roundhouse and Blackpool’s The Old Electric. Her past work includes commissions for the Royal Court, Essex Book Festival, METAL, and Penned in the Margins. Martha has performed across the UK including Soho Theatre, the Barbican, LADA, Curve, Alphabetti, and Contact. She has also performed in some dingy pubs and they were no less extraordinary.
Martha is currently developing Chat Sh*t, Get Hit — a funny and uncompromising new show exploring the suppression of women’s rage.
The project’s R&D phase was supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and there are plans to tour the next stage of the piece in autumn 2025, pending further support.
Entry
Pay What You Decide: £15/£10/£5/£0 (advance booking recommended).
Tickets: now available online via Contact for Thursday/Friday.
Times: Thursday 15 and Friday 16 May 2025, 7.30pm (both nights: a double bill with an interval, ending about 9pm).
Location: Contact, Oxford Rd, Manchester M15 6JA.
Access
Age Advisory: 16+ (aimed at adults, parent/guardian/carer discretion).
Content Warnings: please click here.
Features: two solo contemporary performance works, spoken English with varied content including amplified audio and music; occur in Space 2 on the second floor, a studio space with raked seating.
Queries: please contact Contact via boxoffice@contactmcr.com
About
Each year since 2012, Works Ahead has invited artists to dig deeper into work presented at the previous year’s Emergency or other platform event.
A project developed out of the old Method Lab & SeedFund schemes which hÅb ran with greenroom until 2011; Works Ahead has offered 36 small, supported, work-in-development commissions for artists over the past fourteen years — often in partnership with Contact.
Credits
Works Ahead 2025 commissioned by hÅb and Contact; produced by hÅb; supported using public funding by Arts Council England. With thanks to Manchester School of Theatre at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Project Mentor: Peader Kirk