Split Ends – Loco Klub
Claudia Shnier brings her one-woman show – Split Ends – to the Loco Klub this April.
The tragi-comedy explores themes around obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and coercive control.
Split Ends follows the story of a woman who falls in love with a vacuum – the item being a literal stand in for an abusive male character. The vacuum provokes and affects the character’s OCD and mental health.
The thing about split ends is that as soon as you cut one off, somewhere else on the head, another strand of hair will split. Cut, split, cut split, ad infinitum.
Claudia is consumed by her split ends until she falls in love with a Vacuum, an actual Vacuum, who happened to be the hairiest thing she’d ever fallen in love with. A thing that made her want to pluck her arm hairs, wax her legs and cut her hair.
The Vacuum would shed his hairs, leave, disappear, reappear, shed, tell her he loved her, tell her he lied, leave, shed, appear, shed, malt, love, lie, cheat, shed, shed. Claudia cut hairs, plucked hairs, vacuumed hairs, hunted hairs, waiting for him to pull the plug on what they had because she couldn’t.
Claudia, who has written and directed the piece – has taken inspiration from her own life.
“I started writing the piece with my own truth and experiences at the forefront of my mind, which I found was an incredible way to validate and process my own recollectionsm,” she says.
“As the piece developed, the autobiographical elements were still there, but the reactions I received from audiences really showed me the universality of this story, which influenced how the piece evolved for its next iteration. As I have continued to perform the show, the sharing of this piece and the way it has connected to people from completely different backgrounds has been so enriching.”
The show premiered at Brighton Fringe last year, picking up a nomination for Best New Show 2025. Claudia then took it to the Edinburgh Fringe, Camden Fringe and internationally in Melbourne and Sydney. It’s the first time it’s gone on a regional UK tour of the show.
Following a performance in Edinburgh, a doctor approached Shnier with an invitation to perform to NHS staff. The shows would provoke conversation within the NHS about coercive control and its affects on both physical and mental health.
The story is told through physical theatre, puppetry and video and audio produced by Oscar Gross.