Borderline // Amelia Stubberfield

Borderline by Amelia Stubberfield bears a similarity to the recent evolution of stand-up (with Hannah Gadsby's Nanette as the iconic example), where the conventional structure is punctured, warped and eventually collapsed in the face of true stories of suffering.

For Stubberfield, these stories centre around their years of mental health issues, distilled to a tome of medical notes and a three-letter diagnosis: BPD. Borderline personality disorder, affecting less than 2% of the population can manifest itself in a variety of ways, including fear of abandonment, suicidal ideation and difficulty in maintaining relationships. As Stubberfield self-deprecates, 'the Tinder profile writes itself'.

Their medical notes, along with recorded interviews with both friends and clinicians, offer different windows onto their experience of BPD - "Or, as I call it, life". Medical notes and similar documents have been used by other artists (from Bobby Baker to the vacuum cleaner) in attempts to illustrate the lonely and often grueling journey through the mental health system. With this piece, they serve to fracture the storytelling, as Stubberfield's BPD is seen through the eyes of many separate people across the mental health system - some looking with warmth, some coldly clinical.

In Borderline, Stubberfield vividly illustrates the entanglement of identity and illness by scrawling phrases from her medical notes on her body. In this way, they highlight how easy it is to conflate the sufferer and the symptoms. One therapist is 'bored during sessions with Amelia'; another notes they are 'casually yet appropriately dressed'. Where is the line between Stubberfield's actual and Disordered Personality? Every action is vulnerable to pathologisation, as seen in a re-enacted phone call with the CMHT officer.

Though life with BPD is described openly and vividly, the greyscale 'other place' of mental illness can only be truly understood by those who have already been there. It is alluded to right at the start, before Stubberfield steps onstage: we hear a rising cacophony of noise and drone, building to an uncomfortable volume. A snap from black to a spotlight, revealing Amelia and a microphone. The stand-up starts and the first topographical lines are laid of that other place, from which they may only recently have returned.

- Hannah Maxwell

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Amelia Stubberfield

How common are mental health problems? - Mind

Borderline Personality Disorder - Mind

Community Mental Health Teams - Rethink Mental Illness

Bobby Baker: The Art of Surviving Mental Illness - Guardian

the vacuum cleaner - Mental

She's A Good Boy // Elise Heaven

Are you a girl or a boy?

No.

Gender is a spectrum, and the acknowledgement of that is the bare minimum 2018 should expect. Not everyone wants to wear the same shirt or underwear, or to be called a man or a woman. The signs and signifiers of what makes a man or a woman are constructed through language and symbols, and so are as up for deconstruction as anything else. You can be one, or the other, both or neither, and if nothing else it’s simply polite to accept how others choose to define themselves. Absolutes are incorrect, and definitive claims made in the name of science inaccurate. What it means to be male or female changes across societies and cultures and across history. There is no medical gender binary, no chromosome test that accurately dictates the gender of every person in the world. XX and XY do not neatly correspond to men or women, and ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are just ideas.

Elise Heaven uses their own experience of this articulation of gender to create their show out of humour, anecdote, silly props and homemade costume. The ridiculousness of someone telling someone else how they feel is rightly lampooned, and any mystery around being non-binary subverted through mime and monologue. Like many other shows which engage with the experience of non-binary or trans performers, familiar difficulties are staged and explained – the expectation to wear gendered clothing for a wedding or a job, the awkwardness of parents when kids simply ask, and the unease sometimes felt in everyday interaction. Accompanied by ukulele songs and debates with themselves, Heaven engineers an easy interaction with a supportive audience. The debate around gender continues both within people and about them. Connection and education is the first step.

-       Lewis Church

links relevant to this diagnosis:

Elise Heaven - She's A Good Boy

Gender Beyond the Binary (Video) - Guardian

What Is Non Binary? - refinery29

9 Things People Get Wrong About Being Non-Binary - Teen Vogue

Gender Doesn't Come Down to Chromosomes - The Globe and Mail

Agender and Non-Binary - Our Queer Stories

Wretched // Richard Stott

Richard Stott’s stand-up show documents his experiences as an actor with a disability. Born with Poland syndrome, a condition that resulted in an underdevelopment of his hand and chest, he recounts his experience of existing in an awkward position between identifying as disabled and not due to his ‘non-conformist left hand’. Re-enacting the misguided attention of casting agents and directors, his jokes orbit the fallibility of arbitrary labels, and the grim irony of his position. Once told that he was too young to play Richard III, it was nevertheless acceptable for a marginally older actor to adopt a clawed hand in the role. One incongruity with the character’s body as written was acceptable, whilst the other was not.

Stott’s performance traces the shifting attitudes to disability through the prism of the experience of a performer, from the Ancient Greece through the Victorian era to his own today. Drawing on a memory from a holiday in Athens, Stott asks what his potential as an actor in the Theatre of Dionysus might have been. He asks if he would have been able to perform, or thrown from the rocks in the distance as an ‘imperfect’ specimen. Or would he have participated in the Victorian freak show, making money from his difference? Is it better to hide his disability or engage with it?

The question of disabled actors and disabled roles is one that periodically emerges in high-profile public debate. Eddie Redmayne, Daniel Day Lewis, Tom Hanks and Sam Clafin have all engaged in this ‘disability drag’, as Roger Ebert once put it, to extended protest and debate. The ‘shortcut to an Oscar’ route for playing disabled characters is a cliché, and is now at least questioned when it emerges. The other side of this coin, the stereotyping of the disabled actors, within the work they are able to secure, is equally problematic. The pressure to resist poorly written characters that correspond to a disability is a dilemma within an ultra-competitive casting climate, where any work is to be treasured. Those who manage to negotiate this, are few and far between. Even disabled actors at the peak of their fame still face this difficult negotiation, as Peter Dinklage has attested to. Diversity quotas are a blunt instrument, and as Stott observes, it is one that often leaves actors like him, with a disability but not particularly disabled, in the moral dilemma of grasping the opportunity or denying the work.

-       Lewis Church

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Wretched - Richard Stott

Actor Has Fingers Replaced With Toes – Huffington Post

Poland Syndrome - Genetics Home Reference

Disability Drag - Roger Ebert

Peter Dinklage on Choosing Roles Carefully - The Talks

DON'T PANIC! IT'S CHALLENGE ANNEKA // on the button

A solo comedy show in which writer and performer Sophie Winter plays all the parts, including her boss, her mum, her best friend and 90s TV star Anneka Rice, Don't Panic! It's Challenge Anneka is all about anxiety. It uses humour and silliness to demystify and start conversations about a serious subject.

Sophie worries to a debilitating extent, making daily life incredibly difficult. The people around her don't understand the panic she regularly feels, advising that what she really needs to do is pull herself together and get on with it. Sophie even berates herself – she's a privileged young woman from Hampshire who has suffered no traumas of note. She has a job, a decent income and a roof over her head, what has she got to be so anxious about? Her guilt only makes her feel worse.

Anxiety disorders, which often manifest as excessive worry, fear and a tendency to avoid potentially stressful situations, are some of the most common mental health problems we experience. Modern life is anxiety inducing, but the fight or flight response is ancient. When a human believes they are in danger, their breath shortens, their heart beats faster, they sweat – all symptoms of a panic attack.

After Edinburgh, Don't Panic! It's Challenge Anneka will tour secondary schools, running workshops exploring mental health for students in Year 9 and above. This makes sense, as young people are most likely to experience anxiety. A global review of existing scientific literature by the University of Cambridge published in June this year found that four in every 100 people experience anxiety disorders, with women and people under 35 affected the most.

The literature review highlighted the need for more research, especially into how anxiety affects marginalised groups. Dr Louise Lafortune, Senior Research Associate at the Cambridge Institute of Public Health, says: 'Anxiety disorders affect a lot of people and can lead to impairment, disability, and risk of suicide. Although many groups have examined this important topic, significant gaps in research remain.' (HB)

Don't Panic! It's Challenge Anneka is on at Summerhall (venue 26) until 28 August (not 22nd). See venue for accessibility information - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/don-t-panic-it-s-challenge-anneka

Anxiety UK: https://www.anxietyuk.org.uk

'Women and people under the age of 35 at greatest risk of anxiety': http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/women-and-people-under-the-age-of-35-at-greatest-risk-of-anxiety

'Living with anxiety: Britain's silent epidemic': https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/15/anxiety-epidemic-gripping-britain

'Anxiety: the epidemic sweeping through Generation Y': http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/health/anxiety-the-epidemic-sweeping-through-generation-y/

'How It Actually Feels to Live with Severe Anxiety': http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/anxiety-and-me-189

It Affects Me: http://www.itaffectsme.co.uk

COME WITH ME // Helen Duff

In a world where magazine headlines scream about ever more exciting ways to achieve the heady heights of sexual pleasure, a comedy show based on the inability to hit the ‘big O’ is an oddity. The causes are many and varied, ranging from the physical impacts of health conditions, drugs or the menopause, to psychological issues such as fear or anxiety. In fact, depending on which set of figures you believe, somewhere between five and 12 per cent of women suffer from anorgasmia – the inability to experience an orgasm despite receiving sexual stimulation. Comedian Helen Duff is one of them, and turns what could be a frustrating situation into a frank and funny show climaxing with an anarchic group experience.  
 
Over the course of an hour, she morphs from the human embodiment of a sperm – clad in blue raincoat and leggings – through to a larger-than-life vulva complete with inexplicable Yorkshire accent, removable hair and prominent clitoris (a knitted pink bobble-hat). Together, we are aiming to recreate the mystery of the female orgasm. Our template for this exercise is a survey Duff has carried out, asking people to describe their experiences of pleasure. An all over sneeze combined with a really good itch. The feeling of having Belgian chocolate licked off your genitals. Like eating eight mangoes all at once. Almost dying. Like riding a unicorn through the sky. In the absence of unicorns, mangoes and chocolate, Duff hands out tools to the audience to help us come together: packets of ginger nuts, eight bananas, feather dusters and pots of bubble mixture.
 
By the end of the show, she’s riding across the cramped stage on the back of a burly man wearing a unicorn horn, beaten on the bottom by packets of biscuits and gagging on half-chewed bananas. The result is a breathless, sweaty mess, and judging by the look on Duff’s face, she seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.

- KA 

Come With Me is on at 17.45 at Pleasance That until August 19th (not 15th). Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Hearing Loop - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/helen-duff-come-with-me

Information about anorgasmia: http://www.lanarkshiresexualhealth.org/unable-to-orgasm-anorgasmia/

In Psychology Today - 'Help! I can’t have an orgasm!': https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/save-your-sex-life/201111/help-i-cant-have-orgasm

GUSSET GRIPPERS // Elaine Miller

Some shows are best defined by their audience. This is certainly true of Gusset Grippers, which combines the previously disparate forms of stand-up comedy and incontinence physiotherapy. Incontinence affects 1 in 3 women and 1 in 9 men, so it is likely that some, if not most, of the audience had first-hand experience. Laughter can lead to leakage if you have stress incontinence so given the hilarity throughout, some of us were probably experiencing it during the show itself.

The audience effectively had an hour-long consultation with physiotherapist Elaine Miller. Not the first health professional to go into comedy, she is unusual in using her routine to do her job. Unlike Harry Hill, who left medicine to become a comic, or even Phil Hammond, who remains a GP, Miller uses this show as explicit health promotion - with the emphasis on “explicit”.

Rather than invite audience questions, as was the case in Brian Lobel’s Sex, Cancer and Cocktails, for example, Miller grants us anonymity in this clinical encounter. No one has to share their story - through experience with clients and her own incontinence following the birth of her third child, she knows what we want to ask, why we didn’t go to the doctor, and what mistakes we will make learning the most effective treatment: pelvic floor exercises.

And with an anonymous group rather than an individual client, she is free to exploit every rude joke going about our most intimate body parts and functions. That must be why there was a hen party in on the night I was there. A few years ago, a show called Incontinental avoided “all the obvious and cheap jokes” around incontinence according to a review in Exeunt; by contrast, Miller’s frank descriptions of pish, poo, sex, birth and pelvic anatomy elicited constant laughs of embarrassment and recognition. Her approach is, in many ways, vulgar - in terms of her language, yes, but her directness and practicality as well.

Also in the audience were health professionals earning credits towards their continuing professional development (CPD). CPD helps practitioners like physios and doctors keep their skills and knowledge up to date, and each year they are required to do a certain amount of learning beyond their formal qualifications in order to stay registered with the General Medical Council or the Health and Care Professions Council. Miller's show qualifies as CPD because it is rigorously evidence-based, but she is interested in another type of evidence, too: by following up with consenting audience members, she will assess whether comedy really is an effective tool for health promotion. In this case, I really think it is. (MR)

Gusset Grippers is on at 18.00 until the 28th August (not 10th, 17th, 24th) at Woodland Creatures (Venue 282). https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/gusset-grippers

Find out more about Gusset Grippers and Elaine Miller online: http://www.gussetgrippers.co.uk/  

NHS Choices has somewhat drier information about incontinence: http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/incontinence-urinary/pages/introduction.aspx  

Dr Phil Hammond has two shows at the Fringe this year: http://www.drphilhammond.com/

Sex, Cancer and Cocktails, by The Sick of the Fringe’s very own Brian Lobel, is reviewed here: http://www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk/sick-festival-brian-lobel-sex-cancer-cocktails

Kazuko Hohki’s Incontinental was reviewed by Exeunt in 2012: http://exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/incontinental/

The Health and Care Professions Council explains continuing professional development (CPD) here: http://www.hcpc-uk.co.uk/registrants/cpd/

More about CPD for doctors from the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh: https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/education-support/cpd-scheme-guidance