Fix // Worklight Theatre

In a blend of text and songs we follow three characters, each made up of a collage of the various people Worklight spoke to during a two year research period. The broad topic of addiction is filtered through the lens of behavioural addictions and these determined performers navigate communicating the science of how dependencies manifest in the brain, alongside their intimate character portraits.

The trio preface their findings with the message that the numerous range of causes, impacts and treatment for addictions are ‘up for debate’ and what unfolds before the audience seems to be about humans chasing connections - neurological, emotional and physical. These connections are inherent in the process of social bonding and evolution and yet, frequently disrupted by the loneliness of addiction. Or rather, the loneliness of disconnecting from family, friends and/or the gradual but entrenched process of political and economical disenfranchisement, which then fuels addiction.  

Digestible science-y bits about the habit forming centres of the brain, which addiction alters, travel the audience into the impossibly complex matrix of neurones that explode our soft tissue into a mess of cravings. These longings become more concrete with each cycle of repeated fixes and pauses between fixes. 

The show grazes the surface yet provides a compassionate glimpse into the scope and consequences of addiction. Near the end, there are undertones of devastation in an assertion that ‘you can’t cure this…no one is ever completely fixed’. What springs to mind is how long term care, compassion and the continual re-understandings needed to treat addictions, each sit uncomfortably within impatient, globalised capitalism. Short sharp treatment courses, 6 NHS therapy sessions, TV talk show hosts-cum-doctors…

So, how do we make more time? How do we replenish healthcare resources? How do we nurture rather than rupture emotional connections in order to counter getting a fix, a release, an escape from destructive patterning and habits? 

- Alexandrina Hemsley

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Fix - Worklight Theatre

Behavioural Addiction vs Substance Addiction: Correspondence of Psychiatric and Psychological Views - US National Library of Medicine

Action on Addiction

Codependency Help & Treatment - Rehab & Recovery

Addiction and Recovery

(I COULD GO ON SINGING) SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW // FK Alexander

The volume of this work is at the level of trembling clothes. An affective noise that moves bodies and governs the internal rhythms of an audience to match its ritual of dialogue balladry. The singer is standing in a washed-out strobe aurora with a mic lead coiled in her punk rock grip, hand-in-hand with one from the crowd. The crowd let it lull them into a meditative state.

Noise is often a subtle charming of our unconscious reactions, whether the drip-drip of an irritating tap or the hollow roar of a train-journey tunnel. It holds and releases insides and surface, quivering and dimpling and pushing you back, fading into the background with time but rearranging you as you stand. It bathes and heals and envelops your stresses, leeching it back through vibrations that heal. FK Alexander enters into eye-contracts of healing interaction flanked by the two noisy sentinels of her co-performers. For an hour after entering you stand, sit or shuffle in the space at the limit of aural endurance, until leaving into the shocking quiet. It’s sound as a weapon targeting isolation, and sound as a healing force, bridging bodies in the room.

The work is a cover version of a performance moment, a reinterpretation of a numbingly repeated song to convey the hurt and poignance of the final performance of an aging star. Clattering drums and odd discordance augment the familiar Hollywood build to a transcendent moment of cathartic release. The formality of dressing, undressing, and holding hands acts out a serenade as an engagement. When Judy Garland died of an overdose of barbiturates in 1969 it was an overstimulation to the point of limit. The noise here is an overstimulation, but one that heals as much as that other destroyed. (LC)

(I Could Go On Singing) Over The Rainbow ran at Summerhall Basement until August 28th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/i-could-go-on-singing-over-the-rainbow

FK Alexander: https://www.artsadmin.co.uk/artists/fk-alexander

A History of Using Sound as a Weapon: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-history-of-using-sound-as-a-weapon

Sound Healing: http://qz.com/595315/turns-out-sound-healing-can-be-actually-well-healing/

Come On, Feel the Noise (Paul Hegarty): https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/nov/10/squarepusher-paul-hegarty-noise

Clip of Judy Garland’s Final Television Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJhHPTBjzac

The Second Summer of Hate: Noise Rock Now (The Quietus): http://thequietus.com/articles/19966-noise-rock-2016-reviews

Okishima Island Tourist Association Shoot: http://www.kovoroxsound.com/OKISHIMA%20ISLAND%20TOURIST%20ASSOCIATION%20-%20SHOOT.html

HIP // Kriya Arts

Hip is an hour drifting through the Jungian collective unconsciousness; during the performance, Jolie Booth explores the serendipity of finding uncanny parallels with past lives. Based around found objects, Hip is a semi-autobiographical one woman show that starts by introducing us to a location caught between two timelines and personalities: the home of Anne Clarke during 60s bohemian Brighton, and a squat established by Jolie in 2002.

In homage to Aboriginal songlines which suggests location designates family, the audience is transported, in this extra live performance, to a cosy living room with cushions and cheese and pineapple nibbles. Acting as an aid to suspend disbelief, these props along with real love letters and transparencies of Annie’s eccentrically erotic art, are accompanied by Jolie’s soothing and passionate storytelling.

The title Hip comes from a Hip bone found amongst Annie’s possessions, eludes to a posthumous physical memory and is used to initiate a séance, in which the audience hold hands to connect with the presence of Annie. No longer spectators, they are now a tribe connected and enthralled by the memories of Jolie and Annie. Maffesoli (1996) describes tribes as a collective form of identity which is based on sentiment rather than rationality.

The hypnotic environment of light from an overhead projector used to display letters and poems from lovers and friends of Annie these are interwoven with vestiges from Jolie’s own life and there is an immediate and clear association. In later life Annie was consumed by alcoholism and died alone estranged from her family but Jolie suggests her funeral was well attended, if only by the patrons of her local drinking establishment. At the end of the play, Jolie explains that the hip bone isn’t human and is surely a memento from the Occult bookshop where she worked and frequented: just one of the glimpses into the community of 60s bohemian Brighton.

In respect for the dead, before we leave we join Jolie in a toast (with free tequila shots) to Annie’s life. This closes the circle of memory, love and loss. In a somnambulistic trance the audience leaves; Jolie has provided an authentic and human exploration of inherently unstable modern tribalism.

(LO)

Hip is on at 16.30 at ZOO (Venue 124) ntil August 27th. Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets, Relaxed Performance - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/hip

E15-mothers: https://en.squat.net/tag/e15-mothers/

Advisory Service for Squatters: http://www.squatter.org.uk/for-new-squatters/squatting-made-less-simple/

The lethality of loneliness - John Cacioppo at TEDxDesMoines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0hxl03JoA0

One-woman show Hip charting the times of Anne Clarke, who helped set up Infinity Foods: http://www.theargus.co.uk/leisure/stage/14483157.One_woman_show_Hip_charting_the_times_of_Anne_Clarke__who_helped_set_up_Infinity_Foods/

Dissecting and Detecting Stories in Found Objects and Remnants: http://hyperallergic.com/223735/dissecting-and-detecting-stories-in-found-objects-and-remnants/

What are song lines?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVOG-RKTFIo

SPIDERS BY NIGHT // Coffee House/Stepping Out

Spiders by Night is a double bill of short monologues developed, produced and presented by two Bristol-based theatre companies which describe their work as a collaboration between community members with mental health difficulties or addiction issues and professional artists.

Both monologues are minimally staged and invite audiences to focus their attention on the writing and delivery of both pieces. 'Waiting for ISON', the first monologue begins with Simon looking into space through a telescope in his attic and frantically checking his phone. Simon is an astronomy enthusiast following the comet’s journey across space.

For a while, the monologue merely hints at Simon’s obsessive relationship to his passion, and the isolation that it led to. During that time, we could easily be led to believe that we are about to be told a science fiction story, or one of adventure - and in any case, not an exploration of the character’s mental health. While we understand that Simon may not spend much time outside of his attic or interacting with others, one (human) friend regularly visits him.

When Simon begins to develop a friendship with a family of spiders living in his attic, visits from his (human) friend become less and less frequent, until they stop entirely after Simon calls the police to report the alleged murder of one of his spider friends. This poetic monologue subtly highlights that perhaps to care best for those with mental illnesses, approaches which include supporting people in their immediate environment might be more effective. The Open Dialogue Approach for example is a system of care developed in Western Lapland which works with people traditionally thought of as ‘the patient’ as well as their families or other networks.

The second part of the double bill, 'Insider', is told by a patient-cum-spider herself as she moves around and explores a secure psychiatric ward. With two crutches as additional spider legs, the performer’s physicality compliments the text’s description of the effects of psychiatric care on the patient’s body. Both the patient herself, and an outsider observer, the spider wants to escape and is not able to. While the reason for the character’s placement in a psychiatric ward isn’t made clear, the piece could be read as an exploration of dissociative disorder, or as a comment on the lack of agency the character has over her own care. (LB)

The run of Spiders By Night: A Double Bill of Exciting New Monologues at theSpace @ Surgeon's Hall has now finished. WA, LA, WC - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/spiders-by-night-a-double-bill-of-exciting-new-monologues

Coffee House community theatre company website: http://www.coffeehousetheatrecompany.com/#!about/cfp1

Stepping Out Theatre website: http://www.steppingouttheatre.co.uk/

Further information on the Open Dialogue approach system of care developed in Western Lapland: http://opendialogueapproach.co.uk/

Information about dissociative disorders from the NHS: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/dissociative-disorders/Pages/Introduction.aspx

I'VE SNAPPED MY BANJO STRING, LET'S JUST TALK // Scott Agnew

Before he gets going, Scott Agnew checks that everyone in the room knows what he really means when he talks about snapping a banjo string. Because anyone who thinks they're in for an hour of innocuous anecdotes from a homespun folk player might be in for a shock. The incident during which – to use the medical term – the frenulum beneath the foreskin of his penis tore and “showered the walls with blood” is one of the more viscous but by no means most explicit of stories in this brief survey of the activities that might have led to him contracting HIV. Cantering from sauna to nightclub to drug-fuelled house parties, he admits that sometimes he wasn't in total control of his actions.

Long before his HIV diagnosis, Agnew needed another for his mental health, but the GP he saw wrote him off successively as an alcoholic, a food addict, a gambler, a sex addict and more, without recognising the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Agnew now manages both conditions, but there's an equivocal tone in his text that suggests he's still overwhelmed by this. For instance, he makes a specific point of saying that not understanding his mental health doesn't absolve his responsibility for his virus, as though HIV is a shameful thing. The words that repeat as a refrain in his show are: “It's not ideal – a downbeat phrase in search of a bright side.

Yet he does recognise positive aspects to his HIV diagnosis: for instance, he jokes, his medication has raised his life expectancy above the average for Glasgow, his home. And with the virus now undetectable in his blood count, he's a safer date than most – although, he points out lugubriously, “that's a hard sell on the dancefloor”. His politicking is bolder when directed outside himself: why is it, he asks, that gays on the telly have to be sexually neutered to be acceptable for a mainstream audience? Camp is fine, he argues, but there needs to be a wider spectrum of queer personality in public life. Elsewhere he gets exercised by the widespread use of date-rape drugs among gay men, who have been “hiding for so long” that they have no way of expressing their emotions. Undoubtedly the two are connected.

For all the comedic banter, it's a poignant show, one that raises a number of questions about Agnew's relationship with his diagnoses and with his Catholic family. Within those questions is a sharp impression of of how far the LGBT+ community still needs to travel towards visibility and feeling accepted within society at large. (MC)

Scott Agnew: I've Snapped My Banjo String, Let's Just Talk is at 22.00 at Gilded Balloon at the Counting House until 29 August. See venue for accessibility information - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/scott-agnew-i-ve-snapped-my-banjo-string-let-s-just-talk

On living with frenulum breve: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/feb/28/healthandwellbeing.health2

On HIV stigma and homophobia: http://www.thebody.com/content/art54913.html

A look at the language of HIV stigma: http://www.thebody.com/content/75496/when-words-work-against-us-the-language-of-hiv-sti.html

Information on bipolar disorder: http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/bipolar-disorder/