Moon Song was “one of the most transformative experiences of my life”

Lou Pidgeon is a neurodiverse artist, musician and actor from Leicester who has recently completed their first tour with Bamboozle on our production Moon Song.

We sat down with Lou to discuss how they found the process and discussed everything from how they first got involved with us to any advice they might have.

So Lou, how did you get involved with Bamboozle? 

I never really wanted to go to university so was looking for alternative routes of education and wanted to keep learning about something I was actually interested in. I sent Sue (Bamboozle’s Director: Families & Community) a cheeky email and said hello – I introduced myself and explained that I’m really keen to learn more about the work people are doing for children that I see myself in. As I’ve gotten to know Bamboozle over the past couple of years I’m like ‘wow, I needed this when I was a kid’.

I’ve always been the “sibling” of an autistic person. I’ve got a 25-year-old brother, Jack, and he was diagnosed when he was very young – it was more evident with him – whereas with myself I was very, very good at masking apparently. I learnt that a year ago. I got diagnosed when I was 16, kind of just because I had to. I never really wanted to. I had to because my school were not very great and not willing to help out unless I had a diagnosis. I’m only just learning how I experience neurodiversity coming back off a tour as an adult.

What was your first experience with Bamboozle?

My first experience at Backyard was in Spring 2023 and I came along as sort of an observer/volunteer. I fell in love with it as I studied horticulture at college – I love plants! I love being outside! I never really considered myself an actor or anything, more just a performer. I saw the space and I was like ‘woah, anything can happen here’. I was like one of the little kids coming through the door.

I came to a lot of the sessions and every single time seeing a different child interacting with the characters and the space differently and it wasn’t until I did the Bamboozle Approach training that that really solidified everything, and I was like ‘yeah that does work – they’re the words for the feeling that I got when I was there’.

When did the idea of you joining the Moon Song team begin? 

I was here working on an Arts Council ‘Develop Your Creative Practice’ application with Tina (Bamboozle’s Development Manager). I think Christopher (Bamboozle’s Artistic Director) just snuck in and said ‘hey, so we’re doing this – are you interested?’.

I came to the conclusion that it was probably wise for me to not do the whole tour and looking back now I’m glad that I did that, and I let myself have that jurisdiction over my own capabilities as an autistic person. Sometimes it can feel a little bit disabling when you’re restricting yourself but because of space and because of Christopher that conversation it felt like I was genuinely trusting myself which I don’t do very often. On the last day of the second week, I turned around to everyone else and said ‘I could have done the full five weeks and more’. But I was glad I did that in case I’d have got overwhelmed.

What was your experience of working on Moon Song?

I think it’s one of the most transformative experiences of my life so far and I haven’t quite processed that yet. I think I’ll look back on it in a few years and be like ‘woah, this is where I was before five weeks and after five weeks.’

The research and development week was amazing. It was one of the more challenging parts of the entire experience I found. It was a very open, creative discussion. That was an insane experience for me to be in gainful employment but I’m also playing and listening and being listened to. I feel that my opinions and my lived experiences were very trusted and that was really nice.

My take on it was that Morgan was a young person with autism and the narrative is that they are feeling unsafe in this world for some reason and so to escape it they dream of going to the moon. That is something very similar to what I do almost every night after I’ve been out and about in the real world, I escape through films and shows and TV. I was kind of just playing myself going to the moon.

Originally the character was Megan and it came up that perhaps we could change the name to Morgan so it could be more universally played and more appropriate for myself. I brought it up tentatively because I don’t really like talking about my gender experience. I don’t like it impairing my life in anyway because I don’t actually think about it very much. That was just another way for me to connect with the character and embody it. I didn’t let go of Morgan until the family day and every time I did a show I was like ‘this is me – this is really beautiful.’

Morgan has a piece of foil that they are stimming with at the start and a few times that I did it – there’s one child I specifically remember that was perfectly copying everything I did with the foil and I just thought ‘they’re getting it, it’s working’ and I’m seeing myself in these children and that’s exactly what I wanted to do since I started with Bamboozle.

What have you learnt / loved / found challenging about being on tour with a Bamboozle show? 

Sometimes we’d have particularly challenging behaviours that I wasn’t always confident in my ability to deal with. There are various things you can’t really have any amount of training for and you just have to experience it a few times and learn. I would try very hard to keep myself in character while we could be having the most chaotic experience around us but because I was with the right people it worked. Tim or Amy or Ben would just swing in and just help me out without me needing to say anything. Not even a look – they just knew. I’ve learnt to be able to do that for them as well and I’ve also loved that. I’ve learnt and I’ve loved a lot.

I’m aware that my abilities and my professional work is valued quite highly by a lot of the people around me including my parents. My parents came to see the Moon Song family day and my mum sobbed the entire way through and a lot of it was because she never thought she’d see me so comfortable in a situation like that and so at peace and at home even with all this chaos happening around me. I feel like I’ve found a very peaceful spot in my creative mind where I’m comfortable in my abilities and I’m comfortable saying I’m alright at it.

Why do you think the Approach / Bamboozle’s techniques work?

I think it works because whenever I think about and whenever I’m trying to explain Bamboozle to someone who’s never heard of it before, is the lack of judgement and expectations of the children we work with and the artists we work with and everyone involved in the offices – there’s no judgment at all. Whenever I come here, or wherever we’ve been on tour, it feels like a cool breeze going through your head almost, like this is how it should be.

Enabling through creativity is really powerful because we talk a lot about creating enabled spaces and it’s one thing saying that but actually it’s really incredibly difficult to do. The people I work with here have created an enabled space for me as an artist as well. To the point that I’ve got back off tour and I’ve been really able to pick apart my relationship with neurodiversity which I’ve never done before because I’ve been too scared. Literally over the past couple of weeks I’ve been really thinking about my relationship with the term autism and if that’s not a sign of being in an enabled space I don’t know what is.

What is neurodiversity to you and how does it contribute to your work as a neurodiverse artist?  

I think neurodiversity to me is an everchanging relationship. If I’m being honest, I think I had a lot of discomfort with the label when I first was given it. I never particularly wanted to get a diagnosis – that wasn’t out of resentment or anything just more that I didn’t think I needed too.

Masking plays a huge role in my relationship with the word neurodiversity. But I don’t mask when I’m at Bamboozle which is crazy because the only other place I don’t is probably home. Which is very powerful thing really – I don’t know how they do it. I think just learning constantly what it is to be neurodivergent and how I use it.

Do you have any advice for neurodiverse artists looking to work in this industry? 

Yes, I do. I would say be totally and utterly determined to never be satisfied. If that’s how you operate, and that’s how I do – I constantly want to be creatively satisfied but I know I never will be, so I’ll just keep going and I love it.

I value mentorships very highly, I’ve got a lot of people in my life that are those mentor figures, or guiders, but Bamboozle definitely is one of the great mentorships of my life at the minute and I hope will continue to be. I know that everyone else holds the information I need and I just need to find them.

So – cheeky emails and be unapologetically yourself and allow your own experiences and vulnerabilities to shine because it’s safe too, if you find the right people.

What’s next for you?

That’s one question that I’ve been asking myself repeatedly – what’s next for me really? I do sit and I’m like ‘what now’. Like I said earlier I really love the chase of wanting to stay creative and not letting myself getting into a funk.

I was lucky enough to have the support of Tina in putting together a funding bid and that was a really great experience. Even though I didn’t get it I have this entire funding bid – like an idea of what to do. I’m very intrigued by how we can bring a new audience to folk and an audience that, like me, need to escape this world sometimes and find safety in fun little stories about elves.

Alternatively, watch Lou talking about their experience here:

Read more about Lou here.

Moon Song toured special schools across the UK from March – April 2025 with our team performing four times a day, four days a week. Lou joined the team for two (plus some days of cover) of the five weeks of tour and shared the role of Morgan with Naomi Sparrow. The show is a journey to the moon and designed specifically for autistic young people. The show was directed by our Artistic Director Christopher and the Storytellers in the performance were played by Amy Whittle, Ben Moores and Tim Baker.

Professional photos by Darren Staples.

Words by Lou Pidgeon, edited by Kit Fordham.