FASLANE // Jenna Watt in Association with Showroom and Contact

Nuclear weaponry is a family business, for Jenna Watt. It’s an unlikely one, admittedly, that irradiates its members as well as enriching them. But they’re mostly contented employees of Faslane naval base (officially known as HMNB Clyde), the Scottish home of Operation Trident.

Watt’s solo performance starts with her description of a visit to the Faslane base itself, where she’s awed by the pride that workers, her uncle included, take in ensuring that its nuclear warhead-carrying submarines are immaculately maintained -- even while they hope they’re never used.

So when she breaks ranks to explore anti-nuclear arguments, she’s asking a lot of the protestors she meets. She wants an argument that's stronger than anything anyone's got. Strong enough to withstand a direct hit from a nuclear missile. Strong enough to break family bonds. Strong enough to overcome a lifetime of prejudice.

What she finds is a vulnerable outpost in a field -- the Faslane Peace Camp. Its inhabitants may have been there for over 30 years, but they don't have permanent buildings, electricity - even council rubbish collections. And their number has dwindled to only four people, one of whom explains he’s there for ‘personal reasons’.

Watt radiates intelligence and frustration, checking and recognising her own prejudices against hippies and protestors. On closer inspection, she realises that her uncle has experienced radiation exposure at Faslane, which is implicated in an increased risk of cancer. Recent figures show that safety breaches are on the rise, with the MoD admitting to over a hundred so-called ‘safety incidents’ in 2013-4, leaking radiation into the environment. And even the meagre handful of peace protestors were able to infiltrate the the base’s boundaries on multiple occasions, demonstrating how vulnerable it could be to outside attack.

Watt’s aim isn’t to reveal new information, and she makes it clear that the facts she sets out are all well known to generations of anti-nuclear campaigners. But each fresh discovery is new to her, as a twenty-something woman who’s grown up in an age where there’s very little debate about the rights and wrongs of nuclear weaponry. Scrapping Operation Trident was raised by the ‘Yes’ campaign in the Scottish Referendum, but it’s only ever a background hum in mainstream political dialogues. Her performance heightens a need for raised awareness of the nuclear weapons on Scottish soil - and of the dangers to both Faslane’s workers, and those who live far beyond its boundaries. (AS)

Faslane was on at Summerhall from 6-28th August.

The Faslane Peace Camp website https://faslanepeacecamp.wordpress.com/

Faslane workers exposed to radiation http://tinyurl.com/jqqn8zj

Faslane’s role in the Scottish Independence referendum http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/05/28/questions-about-faslane/

Early on in Jenna Watt’s dramatic investigation Faslane, she illustrates a gaping cultural chasm dividing the audience. Born before 1982? You know that the peace sign - the circular symbol rather than the hand signal - represents the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Any younger than that, and like Watt, you probably think it's just a peace sign. You may even know it best from Gerri Halliwell's Spice Girls dress. 

As Watt told us, CND was something she didn’t know she didn’t know about. To her, nuclear war was sci-fi. She had never known the psychological impact of the Cold War threat. Her sensibilities told her nuclear weapons were wrong. But like it or not, to live free of a tangible fear of nuclear conflict was at least in part due to Britain’s nuclear deterrent, Trident.

Two years ago, Watt began looking for compelling evidence on either side of the debate over whether to renew Trident. But who should she allow to influence her thoughts and beliefs? At the start of her show, others held all the strong views - beginning with Einstein and Russell’s famous 1955 manifesto against nuclear conflict.

Watt described her visit to Faslane to see the Trident nuclear subs with her own eyes. Her relatives who work at the base facilitated her access – but made it no easier to make up her mind. ‘It’s my job’ they said. They explained that they worked, not to send out weapons to war, but to make the nuclear submarines safe for their friends and colleagues who sailed aboard. They appeared not to fear the risks of working with nuclear material, despite recent reports by whistleblower William McNeilly into security lapses.

So Watt visited the Faslane Peace Camp in the hope that those living there would recruit her to where she wanted to be - safe and justified on the side of the liberal left. But they turned out to be a disappointment. Only a woman who became an accidental life-long anti-nuclear protestor managed to show the colours Watt was seeking, revealing that there is a spectrum of campaigning, but no easy answers in a nuclear world. (RM)

Faslane ran at Summerhall until August 28th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/faslane 

Text of the Russell-Einstein manifesto: http://www.umich.edu/~pugwash/Manifesto.html

Images of Faslane Peace Camp with placard 'David Cameron is a pure fanny’: http://tinyurl.com/hesclpm

BBC coverage of whistleblower William McNeilly’s report into safety lapses at Faslane: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-33161226

Fear of nuclear war increases the risk of common mental disorders among young adults: a five-year follow-up study: http://tinyurl.com/jqoutqh

Former chief of British Nuclear Fuels' memoir revives nuclear safety fears: http://tinyurl.com/hr3mch9

WHEN I FEEL LIKE CRAP I GOOGLE KIM KARDASHIAN FAT // Mighty Heart

Amid the photographs and frocks on display in the Imperial War Museum's exhibition Fashion on the Ration (in London last year, now in Manchester) was an unsettling panel equating the wearing of make-up with national morale. Women in the 1940s, it suggested, were encouraged, obliged even, to look their best at all times, regardless of shortages, fatigue, anxiety or bombs; to keep their hair neat, their lipstick bright, and present a trim figure that told the men fighting: we believe you're winning.

The two elderly women whose voices are heard in Mighty Heart Theatre's When I Feel Like Crap I Google Kim Kardashian Fat speak of the past with a glow, as a time when women felt less media and social pressure to conform to a particular look or body image. Whatever they did have to contend with, they didn't have Photoshop or Instagram, or an unregulated diet industry revelling in its ability to profit from human insecurity. But the more depressing impression to emerge from When I Feel Like Crap..., a verbatim show constructed from interviews and online surveys with “self-identifying women” of all ages (and, it's implied, backgrounds), isn't the known problem that personal appearance is a political issue, but the unknown extent to which that policing has been internalised, as one voice after another confesses to judging others as severely as herself.

More upsetting still is the extent to which these women have risked, and experienced, physical harm as a result of their obsession with body image. One woman describes her most successful diet as smoking rather than eating; two others gave birth to premature babies because they willingly malnourished themselves while pregnant; one was hospitalised with excess acid after eating only oranges and another destroyed her metabolism and ultimately developed cancer of the rectum from a lifetime of extreme dieting. When a woman listing off her approaches to weight loss says “anorexia is the only thing I've never done”, the pressing need for better education about physical and mental health couldn't be more clear.

The material is cumulatively devastating, yet Mighty Heart – researcher-performers Lisa-Marie Hoctor and Sam Edwards – leaven it with defiant humour and a buoyancy reminiscent of the Eggs Collective. Dressed in skin-tight leopard print that embraces every one of their lumps and bumps, they sing one interview in the style of a Disney princess (their gift to the woman told that she was too heavy, by a mere 2kg, to play the role of Tinkerbell in Disneyland) and transform a “Scouse beauty routine” into a cheeky game show. And there are just enough stories of women rejecting the entire premise of body image policing, whether by wearing “loads of make-up because it's always in my size” or recovering from bulimia and beginning to find genuine pleasure in the way they look, to make the note of hope at the end of the show chime real.

That hope is dependent on all bodies and shapes being accepted. It's no good celebrating the natural curves of “real women” (cf the Dove campaign) if it leaves naturally thin women feeling condemned as less than real. This is where the note of inclusion struck by the phrase “self-identifying women” is so vital. “No one aspires to be normal,” says one woman, but perhaps they might if the notion of normal were expanded beyond its narrow limit to encompass the full spectrum of humanity.

- MC

When I Feel Like Crap I Google Kim Kardashian Fat is on at 16.40 at Silk Nightclub as part of PBH Free Fringe until August 27th (not Tuesdays). See venue for accessibility information - http://freefringe.org.uk/edinburgh-fringe-festival/when-i-feel-like-crap-i-google-kim-kardashian-fat/2016-08-17/

On the diet industry: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/07/fat-profits-food-industry-obesity

On sugar addiction: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/07/fat-profits-food-industry-obesity

On physical and psychological effects of dieting: http://eating-disorders.org.uk/information/the-psychology-of-dieting/

On anorexia and mental health: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/e/eating-disorders

On the language that surrounds gender non-conformity: http://morganpotts.com/2016/gender-discourse-an-open-letter-to-sisters-uncut/

The Eggs Collective: http://www.eggscollective.com/

Mighty Heart's site: http://mightyhearttheatre.wixsite.com/mightyhearttheatre

If you're in or near Manchester, the Fashion on the Ration exhibition is wonderful: http://www.iwm.org.uk/exhibitions/iwm-north/fashion-on-the-ration-1940s-street-style

TEAM VIKING // James Rowland

James Rowland’s monologue, Team Viking, is a natural second act to Liz Rothschild’s Outside The Box, which I had just watched. Both shows highlight the importance and the challenges of giving a loved one the burial they want, but tackle this sensitive subject in completely different ways.
 
Drawing on a (mostly) true story, the tale starts with his father’s funeral. It’s a huge but slightly soulless affair at which Rowland has given a moving eulogy. We then flash back to the childhood origins of Team Viking – Rowland and his friends Tom and Sarah – who are bound together by their shared love of re-enacting scenes from Kirk Douglas’ 1958 film The Vikings, full of “fighting, quaffing and wenching”. They grow up and continue much along these lines, supporting each other through the ups and downs of life: Tom the fun-loving Lothario, Sarah the organised engineer and James, who plays all the other parts.
 
Suddenly everything changes when Tom is diagnosed with a rare, aggressive and totally incurable cancer. Primary cardiac angiosarcoma is cancer of the heart muscle – a condition affecting around 0.001 per cent of the population. He’s not quite one in a million, but it’s close. The disease is a death sentence, claiming Tom’s life in a matter of months, and Rowland takes us through the heart-breaking process of watching his best friend slowly fade away knowing there is nothing that can be done.
 
For his part, Tom is adamant that he wants the kind of funeral they’d play-acted as kids, cast adrift on a burning boat. He achieves it through some fairly spectacular emotional manipulation, leaving Rowland and Sarah to figure out how to actually make it happen. The technicalities of delivering Tom’s big finale are described in fraught, hilarious detail, far removed from Liz Rothschild’s calm explanations of organising a funeral of your choosing and the legal aspects of obtaining a dead body for burial. It’s not an orthodox ending, and some parts of it were technically illegal, but Team Viking is a moving story of friendship, loss, and the importance of giving someone you love the send-off they desire and deserve.

- KA

 
Team Viking is on at 14:55 at Just The Tonic at the Community Project until August 28th (not 15th). Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Relaxed Performance - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/team-viking

Dead right – who does a body belong to?: http://www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk/2009/07/dead-right/

Cardiac sarcoma: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/277297-overview

Macmillan cancer support - at the end of life: http://www.macmillan.org.uk/information-and-support/coping/at-the-end-of-life

Diagnosis of Liz Rothschild’s Fringe show Outside the Box: http://thesickofthefringe.com/week-two/outside-the-box

Death on the Fringe: https://deathonthefringe.wordpress.com/

TUMOUR HAS IT // Karen Hobbs

They say write what you know (except when they say not to), so if a performer is diagnosed with a serious illness, they will inevitably consider using it as the basis of a show. For Karen Hobbs, her experience of cervical cancer became her “usp” (unique selling point) and she has created Tumour Has It to tell the full story.

Cancer comes with a ready-made narrative structure. There's the back-story (life before cancer), an inciting incident (diagnosis), challenges and solutions (testing and treatment), a clear hero (the performer), an even clearer antagonist (the cancer, which Hobbs named Svetlana), an inner struggle - literally - where the stakes couldn't be higher, and some degree of resolution at the end. So the question is not what story to tell but how to tell it: which metaphors to invest in, and which to reject. At one point, Hobbs appears as a boxer, complete with audio of sports channel-style commentators - but the fight against cancer never starts because there is nothing there for her to punch.

Through the show, Hobbs regularly says “Thank you for coming” to the audience. It seems to reflect the changes she went through, as if each step generated a slightly different Karen Hobbs who must introduce herself anew. There are obvious physical changes by the end of the story, due to the surgery to remove the tumour, but her attitude and mindset have changed as well. Telling this story isn't just about raising awareness or encouraging people to go for a smear test when invited, although this is clearly an important part of her motivation for doing it; telling this story also helps Hobbs reassert control after both body and mind have been hijacked by cancer.

- MR

Tumour Has It is on at 14.50 at Underbelly Med Quad until August 29th (not 17th). Wheelchair Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/karen-hobbs-tumour-has-it

Karen Hobbs’s blog: https://quarterlifecancer.com/

A Cancer Research UK blogpost on how metaphors for cancer that involve fighting or war can be motivational but also harmful: http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2015/09/28/may-i-take-your-metaphor-how-we-talk-about-cancer/

The Eve Appeal supports awareness of and research into gynaecological cancers: https://eveappeal.org.uk/

LOVELY LADY LUMP // Lana Schwarcz

Lana Schwarcz says she hates the concept of the “cancer journey”. After all, she wasn't going anywhere, and there was no chance of leaving the breast cancer behind. Nevertheless, she acknowledges the irony of cancer providing a good story and comedic material for her show, Lovely Lady Lump.

Familiar narrative elements resonate with anyone who has experience of cancer: the way medical professionals communicate “good news and bad news”; inappropriate songs in the MRI scanner (Queen’s “Who wants to live forever”, anyone?); tests and treatments that strip privacy and intimacy from your body. A recurring motif in Schwarcz’s show is when she stands topless, arms above her head, in position for radiotherapy, and tells the hospital staff jokes. As she tells us, by now she is entirely comfortable baring her breasts in front of strangers.

Schwarcz begins by asking the audience to raise their hands if they have cancer or have survived it, or if they know someone who has. As well as letting her gauge who she is performing for, it allows even someone with little or no knowledge of cancer to see that there are others here who do share these experiences. It brings the audience together, shifting our different perspectives towards each other. Theorist Victor Turner called such a collective state "communitas" - there is a shared understanding, which means we are here not to discover a new story but to collectively bear witness to another person who has lived through it. By the end of the show, Schwarcz rediscovers the journey metaphor and decides to own it. An important part of her journey, it seems, was accepting that she was on one.

- MR

Lovely Lady Lump is on at 16.00 at Gilded Balloon Teviot until August 29th (not 15th). Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/lovely-lady-lump

Narrative medicine is an emerging field of research that recognises the significance of the stories people tell about their own illnesses: http://sps.columbia.edu/narrative-medicine

Here is an interesting discussion of cancer, rites and communitas: http://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/articles/winterspring2013/cancer-rites-and-remission-society

Elena Semino, professor of linguistics and verbal art, discussing her research into journey and battle metaphors in cancer: http://theconversation.com/whether-you-battle-cancer-or-experience-a-journey-is-an-individual-choice-39142