Primates // Tessa Coates

A stack of hefty hardback books wobbles next to the microphone throughout Tessa Coates's stand-up show. An aged academic tome sharing the title Primates is there, but also Girl's Own Adventures and the Famous Five - and is that a Harry Potter towards the bottom of the pile? Yes it is, and despite the initial suspicion that these books have been chosen solely for their looks, it turns out that they are all pertinent to the show.

Coates begins by thanking the audience profusely for coming, establishing her persona as an earnest, prudish and perhaps rather posh anthropology graduate who is going to share with us her passion for the study of humans, in particular the study of penises. But she adopts an alternative persona - a cool American - in order to express this as 'I love dick'. And she plays another character, her former lecturer, to introduce the subject. With a background in sketch comedy, Coates is a natural at putting on funny characters, but there is surely an anthropological angle to why it is easier to say certain things sincerely only when playing at being someone else.

Anthropology is the frame for the show. While we learn the reason for the human penis having the shape it does and why some sperm have been called 'kamikaze' by scientists, the content is mostly observational comedy about sex, dating and relationships. Perhaps that is a large part of anthropology, too. But if we understand modern human behaviour as simply the results of past evolutionary pressure and biology, does that reduce our experience of life and love? Like scientists from other disciplines (such as neuroscientist Anil Seth), Coates grapples with this dilemma, and earnestly concludes - in the character of the professor - that while life is essentially meaningless, we are all special.

- Michael Regnier

 

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Primates - Tessa Coates

Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? - Huffington Post

Nothing to Be Afraid Of (Anil K. Seth) - Granta 

The Meaning of Life and the Search for Happiness - Popular Social Science (2013) 

Debating Self, Identity, and Culture in Anthropology - Current Anthropology (1999)

Is the Presented Self Sincere? Goffman, Impression Management and the Postmodern Self - Theory, Culture and Society (1992) 

PERHAPS HOPE // Company Here and Now

Circus may not seem like the most obvious medium through which to explore climate change, but watching Perhaps Hope it starts to make a certain kind of sense. What other art form involves so much risk? Where else do you see humans courting danger, even death, with such abandon? The circus artist's willingness to edge as close as possible to the brink and stare oblivion in the face is a pretty good metaphor for the world's inaction on climate change.

Company Here and Now describe Perhaps Hope as an 'eco-apocalyptic circus show', and its three acts feature a repeated set of sequences that gradually unravel. The soundtrack is integral to the piece, weaving written extracts in among the music. Key words like 'anthropocene' and 'hyperobject' play out over the strings, Laurie Anderson and REM.

The LA Review of Books explains what we mean by a 'hyperobject' in relation to climate change.  In 'Global Warming and Other Hyperobjects', Stephen Muecke explains that a hyperobject is something vast, something that challenges our assumptions about human mastery over things. Hyperobjects are 'scary game-changers, and they have a touch of the sublime'.

Circus is a display of human mastery over physical constraints – it is a space where a person can balance on one leg on the head of a man, or on the top of a wine bottle. It is a space where people take on gravity and win, if only momentarily. And so it is a potent space in which to talk about issues that challenge human mastery. Perhaps Hope underlines the performers' frustrations and fears about climate change. Through its physical unraveling, it explores the psychological impact of the knowledge that we may be facing the end of the world as we know it.

- Helen Babbs

Perhaps Hope is on at 17.30 at Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows until 22 August. Wheelchair Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/perhaps-hope

'Global Warming and Other Hyperobjects': https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/hyperobjects/

 'What is climate change doing to our mental health?': http://grist.org/climate-energy/what-is-climate-change-doing-to-our-mental-health/

'Climate Change Will Have Broad Psychological Effects': http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/06/climate-change.aspx

'Human Health: Impacts, Adaptation, and Co-Benefits': http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-Chap11_FGDall.pdf

'Saving the World Together: 5 Shows Tackling Climate Change in Edinburgh': http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/saving-world-together-5-shows-tackling-climate-change-edinburgh/

'Generation Anthropocene: How humans have altered the planet for ever': https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/01/generation-anthropocene-altered-planet-for-ever