Andrea Holland Interview

October 14, 2025

Andrea Holland Interview

Growing up in Gijón, a sleepy, seaside city in Asturias, Andrea Holland always felt a little bit different. Known as la inglesa (the English girl), she would beg her Dad not to speak to her in English when they were walking around and for the duration of her English lessons, she would put on a Spanish accent because she didn’t want her classmates to think she was showing off.

Despite the many similarities that can be drawn between the rugged coastline, rolling green hills, warming stews and potent cider found in both Asturias and England, Holland found often found herself grappling between feeling too English in Spain and too Spanish in England.

“whatever Holland decides to do next it will have thinking and laughing in equal measure”

However, she explained that: “growing up, [she] absolutely loved having both languages and cultures in life”. Although she didn’t realise it at the time, she was slowly but surely laying the groundwork for Chop Chop—her one-woman show which she will be performing at FesTeLōn on Wednesday, 29th October.

The six-day festival, running from Tuesday, 28th October to Sunday, 2nd November, is an opportunity for Spanish theatre companies to share their work with theatre lovers in London and thanks to a simultaneous subtitling system, all performances are accessible to non-Spanish speakers meaning they can fully engage with each show.

Drawing on her experience of being raised bilingual and bicultural—enjoying apple crumble as much as she enjoyed tortilla—Andrea grabbed the world of fringe theatre and physical comedy with two hands and what started out as a short monologue became so much more, first as a seven-minute long sketch
which she tried out at one of the Omnibus Theatre’s scratch nights and then a 45-minute long, one woman show.

Andrea explained how the jump from seven minutes to 45 minutes was very challenging but by interviewing a number of bilingual people, who all shared very similar experiences to her own, and playing on her experience and also stereotypes, she created English and Spanish—two incredibly colourful and intense characters who sometimes struggle to understand each other.

To both the audience and Holland, the contradictory nature of both characters is what makes Chop Chop so endearing. Most of us have this duality within us and to explore what it means to be one thing and do another is poignant, although I don’t want to give too much away as Holland’s show is something you need to experience for yourself.

When I ask Holland what’s next for Chop Chop, she laughs. Likening the experience of developing and producing a one-woman show to that of having a baby—dedicating the best part of two years to keeping it alive—she’s not sure what’s next.

She’d love to take it to Spain, maybe Barcelona, but she also has lots of other ideas that she’s looking forward to getting stuck into. As much as she has enjoyed working on Chop Chop, she is also looking forward to doing some more collaborative work, explaining that she misses sharing the moment right before you go on stage with someone. But one thing is guaranteed, I’m certain that whatever Holland decides to do next it will have thinking and laughing in equal measure.