Boy but some people HATE this show

We arrive rather early at the Drill Hall, and so we have a coffee and I surf the net for information about Ehlors-Danlos. Bartelt has to endure me exclaiming every so often at something I have read: he does not want to read this himself but he does want to know. In the end, in order not to put too much stress on his cow valve, I tell him there is nothing bad, it's just I can't believe that all his many symptoms fall under one title. The thing which really brings it home to me is that people with type one EDS - and Bartelt is a classic type one – is that they are incapable of regulating their temperature. I think, but for once do not say, that this syndrome should really be called Princess-Pea syndrome.

They are most lovely at Lincoln and it's an extra-special day for them as they are opening their new studio space upstairs. It's a great little room and very flexible. We have the honour of being the first show in. Yet again we have a great technician whom Bartelt adores and whom I go off slightly when he starts barking with Bartelt. It's one thing to have my lizard barking, but to have someone I've just met so enchanted by the lizard that he joins in is quite another matter.

Before the show there are speeches – including one from me, for goodness sake. I'm sure I'm wonderfully eloquent and informative and I'm sure Simon – the Artistic Director – is wondering why on earth he asked me to say anything at all, as I go on and on and on.... I just LOVE and audience. And an audience with wine and nibbles in their hands, generosity in the souls (they are here for the new space, for the Lincoln Drill Hall, for the lovely staff, for art) and the opportunity to talk about the importance of spaces like this for the development of interesting, important work, well, I think they're going to have to hunt me down and catch me in a net to shut me up.

2011 has been an interesting year for The Arts in England. Due to the cuts to the Arts Council's funding their decision not to salami slice all the budgets they hand out, but to cut funding entirely to some – often long-standing – organisations has, by and large, been applauded. The effects have been, and will continue to be, enormous for many artists, organisations and communities. And I get the chance to talk today about how important are small spaces, like this new one at the Lincoln Drill Hall, for developing work.

Creative artists do not spring, fully-formed from their bedrooms. Work is involved. Sometimes it is, indeed, work you can develop in your own bedroom, but this is not usually the case for theatre. And our show is exactly the kind of work for which there is a thirst, these taboo matters are important and move people, on occasion slightly ease some isolation and grief. But this show will never be a huge West End hit: enormous producers will not flock to us wanting to tour it internationally because they can see they money they can make from it. We were lucky enough, it being a one-woman show and ours being a collaboration whose nature means we can live on very little. Also, Martin's company, Obviam Est, had a track-record in Switzerland which meant he was successful when applying for funding there. Although our company, Vital Digression, is new, the story itself and the way it has been made is so unusual that we have secured some UK funding, but we have put our own money and acres of our own time into this, fitting in the money-earning parts of our lives around it, neglecting friends, other parts of our career, our housplants. And why? Oh, I ask that very often. It's not because we think we will make our million with this, but because it is a story we feel passionately about, because it needs to be told, and because so many people who see the show ask us to continue. But other shows have more people working on them, a need to hire a piano, a glitter ball or a pantechnicon to get from A to B, and then on to C, D, E through to at least T. Just because our show is cheaper it doesn't mean it is more important than another show.

If public funding stops for the arts then innovative, edgy, speculative projects will not get made. I have no particular objection to X-Factor or We Will Rock You, but I do not want to find myself in a country where these are the only kinds of drama we produce or where we never hear from the brightest and best talent because there is no way they can afford to make art. It might be different if we were a struggling developing nation, but we are not. We have several kinds of pesto in the supermarkets and consider a fridge and a TV to be essential. Just because there is no way of quanitifying how much the economy benefits from the arts, which spread across the length and breadth of the country, people learning their craft from the ground up, does not mean we do not benefit, that the economy does not benefit. It's one of our last manufacturing industries; everyone says we don't make anything anymore. Yes we do! We make art and we're one of the foremost nations in the world for this commodity.

Oh dear, I have digressed. I didn't say all that at Lincoln, but I said a few things to that effect. Then some audience came up and joined some of the invited guests for the show.

When it comes to performing the show I have had to steal myself, so often, against the idea that everyone is utterly hating it – and me – and wanting to leave, wishing they'd not wasted the money and time on listening me go on and on and on. As I have performed it more and more I have grown in confidence, it's not that I no longer think people are hating it, but I have decided to remind myself that they have chosen to come to the show and I cannot control whether they like it or not. They have chosen to come. But tonight there are two women in the front row and I swear they are hating it. I have been wrong before, very wrong, but I am not tonight. They stay behind afterwards to write exhaustive explanations of why they hated it so much.

Strangely, this is fine. We ask people for their feedback. These two women really hate the fact it is about me, not Kate, and that I smile and laugh. They seem to think that Kate was a saint (have I mentioned, she was not? Must remember to blog about her lack of saintliness) and that my feelings are inappropriate. But we read these later.

For now, after the show, we sit with very old family friends and Michael, a doctor with whom I do communications skills training. Linda, the old family friend, has brought her husband and two grown-up children. Linda knew my dad, Linda used to babysit for us: she remembers Kate as a small thing, way back before I was even around I should think, and this is an emotional show for her. We all sit together laughing and talking. It is great to see them all.

Absurdly we are driving back to my mother's place, after the show, so that we can watch the royal wedding with my mother and aunt. I am no royalist, and Bartelt, well, he's German. But it's a long bank holiday weekend and the food will be good. As we drive into the night, we reflect on this bizarre day: Martin has a syndrome, I have made a speech and two people hate the show. I'm sure there have been others before them, but what they say is very interesting to us. But we'll focus on it more another day, when we've stopped looking at each other and laughing and got used to Bartelt being able to say that his strange, contrary behaviour in any given situation is due to his syndrome.