Hannah Moss explains why she wanted to make So It Goes, which was critically acclaimed when it premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last August

The idea for So It Goes came to me one day at the Edinburgh festival. I had watched a production in which a young girl carefully wrote and drew a spider diagram on large chalk floorboards, and I found myself mesmerised. I realised that writing the words instead of speaking them gave them more weight. The audience read the words in their own time and heard them in their own voice.

After my Dad died, I always struggled to talk about him. In fact I was so numb, I simply did not think about him. If a memory did pop up from my subconscious, I suppressed it or it gave me a lump in my throat. If my mum or sister mentioned him, I could listen and smile but really I wanted to to run away. When I did want to speak about him, I couldn’t find my voice. Everything I wanted to say felt clichéd and I pushed it away before I could even begin to talk.

Something about the performance I watched in Edinburgh resonated with that experience. Suddenly I had the impulse to write about my dad, but instead of speaking I wanted to to write it down. I bought a whiteboard and went into rehearsals with my partner, David Ralfe. In that first session, writing about my dad on the whiteboard and not speaking, I said things I had not been able to say for years. Writing on the board allowed me to explain what I was going through without it feeling false. It was a slow process and meant I had to choose my words carefully. But that was a gift because every word counted.

The rest of the show stemmed from this impulse to speak about my dad and about my own grief. All this talk about talking and, ironically, I’ve created a show with no speaking! But that, of course, is the point: by creating the show, I was finding my voice again.

So It Goes explores the light and dark sides of grief. David and I re-enact some of the fun memories I have of my dad — that he liked philosophy and tea cosies and always wore running shorts! The show is vibrant with music, movement and laughter.

We’ve been amazed also at how open people have been and how willing to share their own experiences with David and me. It has been so interesting to listen to other stories about loss and bereavement. I know that a lot of people struggle to talk about how they feel, so I wasn’t just making this show for myself. I wanted to make something positive out of my grief for other people, as well as myself.

I hope that by watching the show, audiences are able to relate it to their own suffering or the suffering of people they know. Or perhaps by watching the show, they might realise that, bit by bit, in their own time, and in their own way, they too will be able to find a voice.

So It Goes, The North Wall, Oxford, Thursday, April 23.