HAVE you ever missed a person or a place so much that when you finally reconnect it does not live up to what you have built up in your mind?

Greg Wohead knows that strange feeling better than most.

The 35-year-old grew up in Dallas, Texas, but moved to the UK 13 years ago.

That sense of detachment from family, old friends and familiar places was what inspired his latest work, Celebration, Florida.

The unique play, which is coming to the Pyramid on Friday, July 13, features two different and unrehearsed performers each time who know less about the show than the audience.

Greg told Weekend: “There are two performers who have never met each other before and don’t know anything about the show other than some basic logistical things I’ll have told them beforehand.

“At the beginning they each put on a pair of headphones and they’re guided through the entire performance – where to go, what to do, what to say – so I’m essentially speaking to the audience through them.

“The show looks at this idea of distance and stand-ins and being far away from a person or a place that you miss. It explores that through me not ‘being there’ and so my connection with the audience is from a distance.”

Celebration, Florida was made directly in response to Greg’s personal experience and particularly applies to performers who live on the road or have relocated because of their career.

But he also thinks all audiences will be able to find some universal truth in it and occasionally it has brought people to tears.

“It speaks to a wider sense of loneliness that people feel from time to time,” Greg added.

Greg has been performing since he was in high school.

He got his first taste of the UK circuit when he did an MA in acting in London and decided to stay there as he felt there was more support for performers just starting out. Since then Greg started writing his own shows about seven years ago.

Celebration, Florida has been performed around 30 times all around the UK as well as Los Angeles and Berlin

He said: “At the time that I made it I was doing a lot of travelling around.

“I was living half the time in the UK and half the time in the US. Being from the US and having mainly lived in the UK for 13 years there’s a big part of my life which is been very far from the people and places I have an attachment to.

“Missing a person or a place is something a lot of people can relate to but at the time I was particularly feeling that and finding myself reaching out for people and things around me to fulfil those emotional gaps.

“It came from that and then the title came from an actual town in Florida which was created by the Walt Disney Company in the 90s.

“It was created to evoke a sense of nostalgia for small town America with a square and houses in different architectural styles which represent different periods in American history.

“In many ways it was a very fake town so that ties in with one of the other ideas in the show which is a sense of nostalgia for a place that never really existed.

“The idea that when you’re far away from a place you begin to idealise it in your mind.

“It’s easier to pick and choose if it’s something that exists only in your mind. Memories and imagination can be unreliable when it comes to some sort of truth.”

Greg has made a series of challenging shows over the past seven years and he previously brought The Ted Bundy Project to Warrington in 2015. It came about after he stumbled upon the confession tapes of the American serial killer in 2012 and explores the label of ‘monster’ and the tension between attraction and repulsion.

  • Celebration, Florida is at Pyramid on July 13. Visit pyramidparrhall.com or call 442345 for tickets