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

SPOONFACE STEINBURG // Top Right Theatre

Spoonface knows that people in operas die beautifully and she wants to die beautifully too. Diagnosed with autism, and later terminal cancer, the child walks along silver linings in this hour-long monologue. Tackling the difficulties of development disabilities and terminal illness, Spoonface’s optimism never falters, as the backing track of Puccini’s ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’ lulls us into a romantic view of death.

More than 1 in 100 people in the UK live with autism, and they often have difficulty communicating and reading emotions. Because of this, Spoonface’s language is simple. Linear trains of thought are very clearly laid out, in order to prevent the world from being overwhelming.

In the periphery of Spoonface’s monologue is recognition of the difficulty of caring for an autistic child and how that is part of the reason for her parents’ split. While the common claim that 80% of autism families divorce was found to be false in a recent study, having an autistic child without doubt puts extra pressure on a couple. David Mitchell writes about telling people his child’s diagnosis. ‘The replies come quickly but read awkwardly: condolences are inappropriate in the absence of a corpse, and there aren't any So Sorry Your Offspring Has Turned Out Autistic e-cards.’

Named after her unusually rotund face, Spoonface tells us about her short life. Lee Hall, most famous for Billy Elliot, wrote this monologue for radio in 1997 but here Sasha Brooks performs as Spoonface in pyjamas, radiating innocence and vulnerability. Though covering desperately sad topics, this monologue tries to be optimistic, picking up on the positive parts of this life dotted with misfortune. Spoonface values her individuality, saying, ‘to be different is to be who you are’. Mitchell, too, is sympathetic to this idea, noting that gradually you discover that each child with autism ‘possesses its own singular beauty, its own life-enriching experiences.’

- KW

Spoonface Steinburg played at theSpace @ Jury's Inn through August 27 - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/spoonface-steinberg

Information about autism http://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/asd.aspx##Prevalence

A review of the original radio play http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/dont-be-afraid-of-spoonface-1165152.html

Autism spectrum disorder http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/autistic-spectrum-disorder/pages/introduction.aspx

Autism’s effect on a family http://www.aamft.org/members/familytherapyresources/articles/08_FTM_3_18_22.pdf

Divorce rates of parents with autistic children http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/7926161/Parents-of-autistic-children-more-likely-to-divorce.html

David Mitchell: Learning to live with my son’s autism https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jun/29/david-mitchell-my-sons-autism

ELEPHANT OF MY HEART // Prospero Theatre

There’s a long and rich interplay between meditation and the arts, including music and artworks including the ancient Indian tradition of mandalas. 

But bringing meditation into conventional theatre is a little more unusual. Elephant of my Heart is a stage adaptation of Jessica Clements’ book of the same name: Clements herself even performs in the show’s chorus. It’s a memoir of her time in hospital recovering from a brain haemorrhage as a nine year old child. She believes that the inner travels she went on, guided by an elephant, triggered her healing process. 

Prospero Theatre adapt her story using familiar techniques of children’s theatre: puppets, songs, games, and audience participation. But there’s an emphasis on the body, and on creating a new language to talk about illness and recovery. Jess is taught that the scars covering her head are sewn up by a black panther’s whisker, and kept safe by invisible dragonflies. Medicalised terms are demystified by being paired with analogies from the natural world, in a holistic approach designed to lead Jess towards a new comfort with her recovering body.

At the close of the performance, Clements leads us on a simple visualisation, designed to help the audience find their own inner animals. It highlights the closeness between mindfulness exercises and the kind of imaginative games that children often play - their careful focus during  the visualisation suggests that perhaps children’s comfort with their own imaginations makes them more receptive to techniques that adults feel too inhibited to try.

Little is known about whether healing can be accelerated by meditation, but recent studies tentatively suggest that the stress-reducing properties of meditation can strengthen the immune system. Certainly, there are clear links between meditation and the state of mental wellbeing needed for a full recovery. But perhaps the strongest message of Elephant of My Heart is the importance of developing a language and story that enables people in recovery to understand their illness, whether or not that means cultivating an inner jungle.

- Alice Saville

Elephant of My Heart was on at the Edinburgh Fringe, Greenside, from 5-16th August. More information: http://prosperotheatre.com/prospero-community-company/elephant-of-my-heart/

The role of mandalas in meditation: http://www.chopra.com/mandalas-sri-yantras

More information on Jessica Clements’ book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elephant-My-Heart-Jessica-Clements/dp/1452585725

Studies which tentatively suggest the positive impact of meditation on the immune system: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26799456

SWEET CHILD OF MINE // Bron Batten

While Bron Batten’s performance of Sweet Child of Mine (seemingly) did not seek to directly explore ideas of ageing and care; making the piece with her father led to an additional layer of performance gently weaving itself in. In this piece, the lines between Bron’s relationship to her parents on and off stage begin to blur.

In the piece, the artist interviews her parents about what they imagine she does for a living. This projected, hardly edited, documentary-like footage of Batten’s conversations with her parents gets us to think about art and performance. What are they for? Who might they be aimed at? What’s the point of it all?

For Bron Batten, those questions led to her making and touring a performance with her father for the last five years. Performance becomes a way of finding out more about each other, and of opening out a conversation across generations and on both sides of the fourth wall.

This, however is not the performance that was presented during this Edinburgh Fringe. Not quite. Due to an unforeseen illness, Bron Batten’s father, James has been unable to travel to Scotland to perform the show with his daughter.

With ten days to go until the start of the festival, Batten sought support from the local arts community to recruit local dads to stand in for her own.

Beyond the comment and gentle satire of contemporary art, James Batten’s absence - and his daughter’s decision* that ‘the show must go on’ - bring an additional signifying layer to the piece. Indeed, with life expectancy having significantly increased in recent decades, most people currently enjoy longer adult relationships with their parents. As these relationships evolve over time, carer/cared for dynamics shift. In Sweet Child of Mine, Bron Batten is now ‘orphaned’ on stage, and beyond the theatrical framework, we become aware that she will soon become a carer to her ageing parents.

Elsewhere, in Joanna Griffin’s Bricking It, while her father Patrick is indeed present on stage with her, the absence felt is that of their mother and wife whose death prompted the making of the piece, during which Griffin jokingly asserts; “it’s cheaper to bring my dad on stage with me than to put him in a care home”.

A few Fringes ago, Simon Bowes took to the stage with his father in a poetic exploration of the passing of time, with his mother watching from the front row, prepared with cue cards for her husband. A whole family present, but the disappearing of memories and the perceived increase in the speed of time passing.

Opening up their personal relationships to their makers’ families, each of those performances invites us to consider and re-define how we might choose to age, and manage ageing alongside our kin.

- Leo Burtin

* It feels important to note that the performance itself doesn’t inform us as to whether the decision to adapt the performance to accommodate James Batten’s absence was artistically driven or purely circumstantial.

Sweet Child of Mine ran at Gilded Balloon Teviot until August 29th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/sweet-child-of-mine

Journal of Marriage & Family article on intergenerational bonds: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.00001.x/full

Annual Review of Sociology article on intergenerational family relations in adulthood: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27800075?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Bron Batten’s website: https://bronbatten.com/

Information on Bricking It: https://making-room.co.uk/portfolio/bricking-it/

Information on Kings of England’s Where We Live & What We Live For featuring Simon Bowes and his father: http://kingsofengland.tumblr.com/WWL&WWLF

COSMIC FEAR or THE DAY BRAD PITT GOT PARANOIA // Empty Deck

From their living room, two men and a woman become increasingly overwhelmed by news of natural catastrophes and the increased evidence of climate change as one of the biggest contemporary challenges for society to face up to.

Christian Lollike’s characters carve themselves a route out of their anxiety and helplessness in the face of global disasters by taking turns to stand in for Brad Pitt, and occasionally Angelina Jolie, as they seek to come up with a blockbuster that might just change the world.

The play rapidly unravels around the characters’ attempts at filming their own DIY Hollywood “eco-calypse” with a smartphone streaming to a screen at the back of the stage.

Lollike’s script is constructed over multiple layers, in a distinctly postmodern voice blurring our ability (at times) to identify who is speaking - might it be the characters in the play? the characters played by the characters in the play? or the actors as themselves?

The paranoia referred to in the title - more accurately paranoid schizophrenia - is present throughout the piece and explored in various guises. From the formal exploration of the illness in the writing itself, to the direct references to its symptoms and possible manifestations in the text and well-worn stage representations of madness (loud voices speaking at once, repeated laughter etc.).

Cosmic Fear’s artistic exploration of paranoid schizophrenia provides a lens through which to highlight the links between capitalism, climate change and mental (ill) health.

In art and poetry the weather has often provided rich images to express complex thoughts, feelings and emotions - it wouldn’t be difficult, for example to read Paul Verlaine’s Autumn Song as a poem about depression developing in old age.

With Cosmic Fear… however, the weather (cast as the Villain) is no longer a way to simply illustrate our relationship to our mental health, but a timely warning that the consequences of climate change to our environments are now directly impacting our sense of being. (LB)

Cosmic Fear or The Day Brad Pitt Got Paranoia is on at 15.00 at Bedlam Theatre until August 28th. Wheelchair Access, Level Access - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/cosmic-fear-or-the-day-brad-pitt-got-paranoia

Symptoms of schizophrenia: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Schizophrenia/Pages/Symptoms.aspx

On Paul Verlaine: http://www.rosings.com/paul_verlaine.html

On impact of climate change on mental health: http://grist.org/climate-energy/what-is-climate-change-doing-to-our-mental-health/

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

FINDING JOY // Vamos Theatre

Without words, and with masks, Finding Joy explores the impact dementia has on both the person with the disorder, and the people around them. Joy is a widow, living independently. She's visited regularly by her daughter and grandson, who witness her gradual deterioration. It starts with Joy putting strange items in the fridge, and a mix-up between some salad cream and some milk, and ends with her retreating into the past as the present becomes too confusing.

Dementia is a progressive disorder. It affects how the brain works, and in particular the ability to remember, think and reason. According to the Alzheimer’s Society, 850,000 people in the UK suffer from dementia. Worldwide, it's estimated that 135 million people will be living with it by 2050, and there have been warnings that a 'dementia tsunami' is coming. That said, the age-specific risk is thought to be falling, for men at least. The New Scientist reported this April that incidence of dementia in men in the UK has fallen by 41 per cent; there was only a 2.5 per cent drop for women.

There's no cure for dementia, and treatment tends to focus on making people's lives as comfortable and dignified as possible. In Finding Joy, the grandson visits one day bearing the gift of a toy dog. It's a glove puppet, which he brings to comic life to the sheer delight of his grandmother. At moments it seems like Joy thinks it's real dog, at others it's clear she knows it's make believe. Either way, the dog makes her happy and eases her distress.

In the real world, some dementia patients are being treated with PARO, a robot harp seal, and the results seem positive. Researchers at the University of Brighton say PARO reduces agitation and aggression, and promotes social interaction. An article in The Guardian quotes Claire Jepson, an occupational therapist at a specialist assessment unit for dementia patients. She says the robot seal 'allows people to still feel a sense of achievement, a sense of identity. They become the carer instead of the cared for.' Put simply, the robot is enabling some patients to find joy.

- HB

Finding Joy played Assembly Hall at 16:30 until 14 August - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/finding-joy

'What is dementia?': http://www.ageuk.org.uk/health-wellbeing/conditions-illnesses/dementia/what-is-dementia/

Alzheimer's Society: https://www.alzheimers.org.uk

Alzheimer's Research UK: http://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org

Dementia was one of the challenges nominated for the 2014 Longitude Prize: https://longitudeprize.org/challenge/dementia

'Dementia incidence for over 65s has fallen drastically in UK men': https://www.newscientist.com/article/2084859-dementia-incidence-for-over-65s-has-fallen-drastically-in-uk-men/

University of Brighton's PARO Project: https://www.brighton.ac.uk/healthresearch/research-projects/the-paro-project.aspx

'How Paro the robot seal is being used to help UK dementia patients': https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/08/paro-robot-seal-dementia-patients-nhs-japan

'PARO Therapeutic Robot': http://www.parorobots.com

Magic Me, UK-based intergenerational arts organisation who run arts programmes with residential care homes, inc. people with dementia: http://magicme.co.uk

BEND IN THE RIVER // Deep Water Theatre Collective

Have you ever heard of Hansen’s disease? What about its more common name, leprosy? A disease that feels like it should belong in the history books, more than 200,000 people are still diagnosed with Hansen’s disease every year around the world, mainly in South America, Africa, India and south-east Asia. Given this distribution in the developing world, it’s easy to forget that it was a problem in the US until well into the 20th century.
 
US company Deep Water Theatre Collective set their play, Bend in the River, in the Carville National Leprosarium in the early 1940s. Shut away from the world, the residents are stigmatised and shunned, rejected by their families and communities. They’re forced to change their names, and are tended for by Dr Guy Henry Faget and his team of dedicated nuns who act as nurses and spiritual counsellors. The exact cause of the disease is unclear – although it’s known that certain bacteria are involved – and there are no good treatments, only isolation from the world and the hope of a clean run of twelve monthly skin scrapings.
 
As Faget’s research starts to lead to new hope for a cure, resident Stanley Stein resurrects “The Star”, a newsletter describing life at Carville and raising awareness of the disease. Other residents carry on with life in the confines of their quarantine, falling in love, falling pregnant and volunteering for endless clinical trials of the latest therapy. Finally, something works. It’s a new drug called Promin, and the effects are astounding. It makes Faget’s name as a researcher and changes the lives of many Carville residents.
 
Mandatory quarantine for people with leprosy was revoked in the US in the 1950s, once it became clear that the disease wasn’t nearly as contagious as had been feared. Today Carville is a museum dedicated to Hansen’s disease, brought back to life for just one week here in Edinburgh.

- KA

 
Bend in the River has finished its run at Greenside @ Nicholson Square - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/bend-in-the-river
 
Promin – the first breakthrough drug for leprosy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promin

The National Hansen’s Disease Museum: http://www.hrsa.gov/hansensdisease/museum/

The Carville Star: http://www.fortyandeight.org/the-star/

Previous issues held at the Louisiana Digital Library: http://www.louisianadigitallibrary.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15140coll52

Leprosy in Louisiana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprosy_in_Louisiana

Is Hansen’s disease contagious?: http://www.medicinenet.com/is_leprosy_hansens_disease_contagious/article.htm

Information about Hansen’s disease: https://www.cdc.gov/leprosy/

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/

TRACING GRACE // OffTheWallTheatreCo

Sixteen people are diagnosed with encephalitis – severe brain inflammation – every day in the UK, yet most of the public have never heard of it. Based on the real life experiences of writer and director Annie Eves, whose sister Grace was diagnosed with the condition at just three weeks old, Tracing Grace aims to open our eyes to the existence of encephalitis and the challenges of living with its long-term impact.
 
Making such a personal piece about such a serious but poorly-understood condition is a brave move, and the production has benefited from the input of Dr Ava Easton, CEO of the Encephalitis Society. As explained at the beginning of the show, the cause of encephalitis is unknown, although it’s related to infection in the body. Its effects are equally mysterious and unpredictable. In the case of Grace, who we follow from childhood through to her current age of 18, it’s described as a “headache that never stops”, punctuated by distressing fits and angry, screaming outbursts. Her family – mum, dad and Annie, portrayed both as a child and an adult – bear it all with loving fortitude, even when things turn ugly and violent.
 
We witness Grace’s towering fury at not having exactly the right sandwich filling (Laughing Cow cheese spread and jam), and her frustration at being unable to understand why she isn’t like other kids. We also meet Annie’s well-meaning but daffy social worker, nicknamed Mental Gentle, highlighting how support for families can fall woefully short in the face of such difficult circumstances. Yet despite the life-threatening fits and the increasing challenges of caring for Grace as she grows into adulthood, the play ends with a family decision to keep her at home rather than sending her into residential care. I cannot help but wish them all well for the future, whatever that looks like.

- KA

The current run of Tracing Grace at Paradise in the Vault has now finished.  https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/tracing-grace
 
More information and support is available from the Encephalitis Society: http://www.encephalitis.info/

Q &A with writer and director Annie Eves: http://www.encephalitis.info/awareness/tracinggrace/

Brain on Fire – a Naked Scientists podcast focusing on brain inflammation: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/show/20150324/

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

THE INEVITABLE HEARTBREAK OF GAVIN PLIMSOLE // SharkLegs

Few body parts are more engaged with (both literally and metaphorically), in theatre and literature, as the heart, and The Inevitable Heartbreak of Gavin Plimsole joins a healthy tradition of artwork in which heartbreak informs a medical heart condition, and in which a medical heart condition informs the story of a heartbreak. In TIHOGP, the audience follows Plimsole’s diagnosis of a serious heart condition caused from malformation, and follows him through informing friends and family, confronting the big questions of ‘Why Me?’ and confronting the uncomfortable reality that no one (not even a young man) is invincible.

The innovation with SharkLegs’ production however, expands both the metaphoric and literal questions of fate and our beating hearts, done by asking audience members to don a heart monitor, the readings of which are projected in the performance space, and which affect – Choose Your Own Adventure-like – the choices of the central character. While Plimsole’s central purpose is to ask audiences to confront their own mortality and their own sense of carpe diem (understood as both a point of inspiration and exasperation), he also thoughtfully shares his reality as a man with a chronic heart condition needing to make constant potentially-life-altering decisions about foods to eat/avoid and activities to do/avoid. For those who develop chronic conditions, the transition from an invincible body to one negotiating limitations can be challenging, as evidenced by Plimsole’s quite legitimate anger/conversations with God/attempts to reconcile past relationship. Reflecting on my own experience of writing about my illness many years ago, which I did in a series called BALL & Other Funny Stories About Cancer, I am quite moved by Plimsole’s honest anger and frustration on display.

By inviting the ever-changing heartbeats of the audience into the space as an essential set piece, The Inevitable Heartbreak of Gavin Plimsole asks audiences to reflect on the diversity of life and experience and how, despite us drinking energizing Redbulls or calming chamomile, our hearts and brains are still quite unpredictable – and this is a reality as horrifyingly frightening as it might be deliriously freeing. (BL)

The Inevitable Heartbreak of Gavin Plimsole is on at 13.40 at Pleasance Dome until August 29th (not 16th). Venue is wheelchair accessible, hearing loop available - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/inevitable-heartbreak-of-gavin-plimsole

A few other projects on hearts, heartbeats and heartbreak:

Sheila Ghelani’s Covet Me Care for Me: http://www.sheilaghelani.co.uk/covet-me-care-for-me/

Ira Brand’s Keine Angst: http://www.irabrand.co.uk/?works=keine-angst

Marina Tsartsara and Miriam King’s work: http://marinatsartsara.weebly.com/blog

On Hubbub – A Wellcome Trust funded project, run by an interdisciplinary team looking at work, rest, noise, tumult: https://wellcome.ac.uk/press-release/exploration-rest-and-busyness-announced-first-project-hub-wellcome-collection

On Waiting for Diagnosis – Fuel’s While You Wait Series: http://www.fueltheatre.com/projects/while-you-wait