Josephine auditions to play the piano for a prestigious orchestra. Her partner Jasper, a fellow pianist, helps her prepare. Josephine, self-defeating, sets a curse on herself that prevents her from performing and him from helping her.

As an aspiring pianist, she feels she has to destroy the menace that lurks around her sense of self in order to perform. It’s a feeling that really builds with the pressure she faces from her teacher to play well. And so, like an exorcism of sorts, she summons and releases the deep-rooted and unruly monster she truly believes herself to be, to make way for a new state of autonomy and possibility.

The director Stella Scott writes: 'Virtuoso shifts between the internal horror that runs in tandem with the external pressure to succeed. Negative self-perception can create chaos. Victoria Rigby, the lead and co-writer, Amy Wells, the producer, and I wanted to come up with a self-inflicted curse that could speak to the destructive nature of fears, doubts and anxieties. And we wanted to find a spell that could be broken. It’s hard to say more without giving the story away, but it was key that the central device challenged the expectations we felt as women to behave a certain way when searching for artistic development.'

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