Love and Other Devices

Love and Other Devices

To what extent should we medicate a lack of love?

Is a chemical attraction better than a digital distraction?

Or should we just be left to our own devices?

Google Trends report a surge in searches for ‘mobile phone addiction’, closely followed by ‘social media addiction’. Mine is on my lap. It’s not off. It’s never off. Because this is Normal? 2018, and we are living in an always-on culture. The conversation is ‘Love and Other Devices’. We are here to talk about love, and how the rise of mobile phone addiction might be the death of romance.

Love is critical to our survival. Babies are literally helpless without it. Without attachment, they die. They need us to be responsive to their cries, attending to their needs. Love carries us through life. Arguably, it is all we seek.

Yet in our relationships, we are choosing to be elsewhere. Sat with our phones never more than a reach away, we scroll through a never-ending sea of content. Like Pavlov’s dogs, we respond to each ring, ping and notification with a panting, slavering hunger. Leaving our partners starving for our attention. Our screens are the new seductress. What is left of love, if we are so easily drawn away into our mobile phones? And should we be chemically resuscitated to our desire once we have lost our passion?

I admit, the discussion wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Anticipating a chat about addiction to scrolling, the conversation swiftly segued into love and medication of love. It’s a difficult conversation. I confess to not knowing the voices of everyone who has a stake in it. Medicating those with depression, children with ADHD, prescribing pills, can sometimes problematise more than it solves. But it did beg the question. Should we ever be ‘prescribing’ love? Or, more fascinatingly, suppressing love?

A relationship expert, an addiction expert and a man with a PhD in Love walk into a bar…  

The conversation drifts from phone addiction, towards the ‘answer’ of medication. Why is medication the solution? Why should we not be left to our own devices? Have gone so far over the line that we no longer discuss the cause of the addiction, but head straight for medication?

The research is exciting. That we can track the brain's signals and chemicals and reproduce them as a cure, is a positive advance in science. I think. But.

What is love?

Baby don't hurt me

Don't hurt me

No more

- Bex Bell

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Love and Other Drugs - Philosophy Now

America's Love Affair with Prescription Medication - Consumer Reports 

Chemical Attraction - Observer

Phone Addiction is Real - Forbes

Dad Dancing // Rosie Heafford, Alexandrina Hemsley and Helena Webb

Over the past month or so, choreographers Rosie Heafford, Helena Webb and I have been working with a supporting cast of people local to Gloucester on our show Dad Dancing (2012 onwards). It is a show that came about when our three dads would come to see our dance performances at Laban back in 2009, completely befuddled by what we were up to. It has grown into a show that reflects on the role of fatherhood - acknowledging the diversity within these roles and how they are taken up. We work with dads, father-figures and children of any age to tease out tender portraits of what’s at stake between and within these relationships.

It’s a project whose emotional weight strikes me at different points. Composing from the external vantage point of choreographers to sharing the lived experiences and dynamics of our own father-child relationships is very affecting. More and more, I think that the show asks for resilience and vulnerability to be intertwined particularly for the supporting cast. It is an ask that we as a creative team nurture as best we can. Our process spends time dancing altogether with the  simple but dedicated task of listening to the textures found within music and our internal rhythms. Our hope is that engaging in these acts of improvisation reveals the joy of movement, the space dancing offers to process emotion and an ever-changing sense of togetherness that can be evoked as a group. 

On stage, I had a sense of collective building, revealing and witnessing. Resting post-show now, I am reflecting on how important these three actions are when considering relationships between parents and their children, more nuanced understandings of parenting roles that undo gendered inequality and the need for society and governments to better understand the diversity of father roles and re-shape policies that represent and support this. 

- Alexandrina Hemsley

Links Relevant to this diagnosis:

Dad Dancing at Strike A Light 2018

dad-dancing.org 

Putting Dads in the Data - Fatherhood Institute

Paternity Rights - Guardian

Mobile / Paper Birds Theatre Company

Mobile marks the second installment of Paper Birds Theatre Company’s trilogy on social identity. Performed in a disused caravan before an audience of nine, the play aims to explore the emotional ambivalence caused by social mobility. After a brief, somewhat awkward ‘name game’ on deck chairs outside, the guests are invited in, offered biscuits and other hospitalities while our host gives us an overview of her situation. Her story is a familiar one: after the abrupt termination of a long term relationship, she finds herself without a flat to live in or a safety net to catch her. She is forced to return home. Perhaps in attempt to salvage some sense of progress, she shuns her mother’s actual home in preference for the caravan instead.

As Cindy tells her story her tone is apologetic and polite; she avoids dwelling on the disappointments of the previous years, avoids judging her absent mother, avoids making any real value judgements at all. Yet the caravan itself seems a working class symbol that she is silently wrestling against (physically misplacing items, shifting clutter, moving seats). Having spent her twenties affluent and in love, you can sense that she perceives her surroundings differently now; senses a tackiness to it and is simultaneously burdened by the guilt of this knowledge. Here, the immersive format works well; as we politely engage with our host, there's a vague, unspoken discomfort; the cramped seating arrangement bringing home her sense of constriction.

Cindy’s tale is augmented with verbatim recordings of those who’ve ‘made it’, other working class heroes who found riches or prestige later in life. Yet, similar to our host, their stories progress falteringly; they stammer or equivocate as they describe their past, they alight from ideas as soon as they land upon them. It’s as if the subjects are caught between two grammars; the rules of one silently militating against the other.

Indeed, this is one of the most intriguing aspects of the play, discussions of class leaves the subjects tongue tied and awkward. It seems there isn’t a shared language or set of values by which to explore the idea of the working class. The speakers are forced to perceive themselves from a myriad of perspectives, from within and without. At times, they see social hardship as part of their personal narrative, an origin story by which they define themselves; at other moments they perceive it as a past that they have overcome, something to be defined against.

We see these sort of mixed messages echoed on a larger scale by society and within the media. The very existence of a working class in the UK is apparently subject for debate, with politicians proudly declaring its extinction even while growing numbers of the population identify with the status. On a more qualitative level, perceptions of the working class seem to vacillate wildly from objects of derision (as indicated the the slew of ‘poverty-porn’ programmes rolled out each season) to exotic beings that enamour (look no further than the surging popularity of grime music among the middle classes). These kind of mystifications seem increasingly dangerous, particularly in a society as polarised as ours. As the recent referendum illustrates, there appears to be a mutual bafflement across classes and across the country itself.

Mobile plainly conveys the dislocation and ambivalence that can accompany social advancement. Instigated by a social scientist and the product of many year’s research, the play maintains a broad focus; through a series of foggy, personal anecdotes, the show highlights the bewildering process of talking about and understanding class; a concept which is so emotionally loaded and conceptually slippery. Yet beyond the realm of the play, this conceptual ambiguity translates into real-world, physical consequences. For the first time in recent history, the ‘health gap’ between the rich and poor is widening and there now exists greater discrepancy than ever before (since the early 90’s, the gap has increased by 1.7 years). The explanation for this — that the poor are making ‘damaging lifestyle choices’ — remains deeply provisional. The very impulses driving these choices on a systemic level remain shrouded. Without a shared vocabulary, we arrive at an impasse. As conversations about class become increasingly elliptical, the links between class and physical health reify, transform into an inscrutable fact. If the experience of class becomes ineffable, health becomes a privilege, awarded to some, on a basis that is deemed either arbitrary or mysterious. (SG)

http://www.thepaperbirds.com/

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/labour-says-the-working-class-no-longer-exists-so-why-do-60-per-cent-of-us-claim-to-belong-to-it-8452739.html

http://www.consented.co.uk/read/life-on-the-dole-britains-obsession-with-poverty-porn/

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21701257-results-paint-picture-angry-country-divided-class-age-and-region-country-divided

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-36170289

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/a-25-year-gap-between-the-life-expectancy-of-rich-and-poor-londoners-is-a-further-indictment-of-our-9061888.htm

F*CKING MEN // King's Head Theatre

Ten interlocking scenes present separate sets of lovers, each semi-ironically riffing on different ‘aspects’ of love. The platonic ideal. ‘Simple’ carnal lust. Tortured archetypes (‘Actor’ and ‘Journalist’) playing out and struggling with their desires, counter-desires and the simple physical fact of their bodies. 

F*cking Men is a reflection on what it means to live out what could queasily be termed the ‘gay male experience’ surrounding sexuality and perception, commitment and relationships. The title is something of a red herring. Whatever nudity there is remains secondary to the ideas surrounding the aforementioned themes. The bodies are used as props, showing the way that the relationships depicted subtly morph and modulate under external and internal pressures and strains.

The way that sex and body can be subtly weaponised is also deftly explored. It’s a messy, fraught exploration that deals with the ugly, implicit guilt and repression in denied sexuality.  The one scene without any sex (the meeting between ‘Journalist’ and ‘Actor’) is a meeting point between paranoia, fear and self-loathing, all focused on the body and messy sexual desire. Yet resolution isn’t found in the act of sex, either. As each scene shows, it is the sheer multiplicity of desire that makes it such a complex field of enquiry. Whether it is denied or temporarily fulfilled seems to make no difference. Resolution is as far away as ever.

- Francisco Garcia

F*cking Men played at Assembly George Square Studios - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/f-cking-men

Being Gay: Politics, Identity and Pleasure- http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/newformations/09_61.pdf

Homophobic? Maybe you’re gay?- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/homophobic-maybe-youre-gay.html

Evolution of Gay Theatre- http://www.juilliard.edu/journal/evolution-contemporary-gay-theater

Fringe: Queer Art & Film Festival- http://www.fringefilmfest.com/

TRAVESTY // Fight in the Dog

Travesty is a play dealing with transitions. From one state of life to the next. Between innocence and ageing masquerading as experience. From a romantic relationships move from cradle to grave. From early 20s insouciance to the creeping fear that this might be all you’ve got. From dissatisfaction to, well, what exactly?

Both Lydia Larsen and Pierro Niel-Mee are two typical-ish archetypes. She- playing the older, acerbic, disillusioned (and male) teacher Ben- is full of a coiled tension hiding behind an aloofly ironic exterior. He- playing middle-class (and female) PR executive Anna- is full of easy first-flush of youth optimism. Their relationship is charted over four acts, from enraptured beginnings to fraught, bitter end.

It’s a play that creates a certain sense of frisson in the audience by subverting lazy gender norms, not by doing anything wildly radical, but by simply by inverting them. There’s the possessive slaps that Larsen gives Niel-Mee on the behind. There’s the shamed covering of the male, not female nipple. And then there’s the language.

What is ‘female’ language? For that matter, what is ‘male’ language? It’s not so much a question that’s taken up, but rather a set of cliched assumptions played out for comic effect. Anna, at points, both sly and circumlocutory and we’re invited to laugh at our smug assumptions because it’s coming out of a man's body. Ben is, at points, gruff and absurdly affected. Again, we are invited to laugh because it’s a set of language and gestures that we aren’t primed to ‘expect’ coming from a certain kind of body.

What keeps the work from merely reinforcing these stereotypes is that the writing is good enough to subtly acknowledge that we as an audience are having our own assumptions played with and teased out. Not only is Travesty a play explicitly dealing with all of the manifold day-to-day compromises we make to sustain, or break, relationships; it’s a play that forces you to acknowledge the compromises we make in communicating through our bodies and our imperfect language.

- FG

Travesty played at Assembly George Square Studios - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/travesty

A Short Introductory Essay on Judith Butler- http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm

How to Shake Up Gender Norms- http://time.com/3672297/future-gender-norms/ 

Performative Acts and Gender Constitution- http://facweb.northseattle.edu/mjacobson/SPECIAL%20TOPICS%20IN%20PSYCHOLOGY/Subjectivity/PerformativeActs.pdf

The Non-Verbal Semantics of Power & Gender- http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4612-5106-4_8#page-1

IT FOLDS // Junk Ensemble & Brokentalkers

At first, It Folds feels baffling, a blur whose beauty defies close analysis. It blurs the boundaries between life and death, making the ghosts of murdered children walk among their grieving families. It blurs the lines between truth and fiction, drawing on real-life stories of child abduction but muddying their details until they become universal. And most of all, it blurs the categories we place performance into. Its large cast mix dance, physical theatre, matter-of-fact monologues and disconcerting wit into a piece that creates a incense-heady atmosphere of its own.

Irish dance theatre company Junk Ensemble have collaborated with theatre-makers Brokentalkers to create It Folds. It has four directors, a nine-strong cast, and a choir who hymn the story, both on and offstage. These huge massed ranks of voices, seen and unseen, create a kind of surging community around the stories it tells. It’s a sense of community that’s hugely fitting for the subject of child abductions, and the way that they stir up mass hysteria, mass searching, and mass grieving in turn.

Through the ’80s and '90s, it felt as though every summer was marked by the story of a child who’d disappeared, and a tabloid hysteria that simmered on for months or years until its grim conclusion. Why do they hold such fascination? Some writers have put forward the idea that moral panic over child abduction was a backlash against feminism: the moral right's attempt to refocus attention on the nuclear family, with the child at its heart. Before the Catholic church was implicated in child abuse itself, it was a source of stability that emphasised the mother's role in protecting children from the outside world.

The religious imagery of It Folds emphasises the contradictory role of Catholicism in both nurturing and threatening children: an Irish priest briefs altar boys without his shirt on, but it's only when he skips mass that he's abducted. The damage done to parents, under new pressure to protect their children, is explored too. There’s a kind of surreal riff on the way that grieving parents have to perform their relationship for hordes of prurient outsiders: a man and a woman play two halves of a pantomime horse, but they stretch and pull in opposite directions, dragging each other to the floor.

The silliness of a pantomime horse might seem to be at odds with the grim subject matter of child abduction. But the seriousness of the performance is complexified, rather than undermined, by irreverent moments: like a murder ballad strummed on a banjo, or a beautiful hymn sung by a chorus of sheet-wearing ghosts. And the afterlife it imagines might not be sanctioned by any church, but something about its unified beauty lifts us to the heavens, all the same.

- AS

It Folds was on at Summerhall, 5-28 August http://festival16.summerhall.co.uk/event/it-folds/

More information on Brokentalkers' work http://www.brokentalkers.ie/

More information on Junk Ensemble's work http://www.junkensemble.com/

How ideas of stranger danger have changed the way children play http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8399749.stm

The influence of christianity on child abuse hysteria  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/books/review-we-believe-the-children-on-child-abuse-hysteria-in-the-1980s.html

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

SCORCH // Prime Cut Productions

‘My body is a weird black hole I drag around with me’

Amy McAllister plays the gender-curious teen Kes in Stacey Gregg’s monologue revealing society’s lack of understanding towards gender fluidity.

Based on the real case of Justine McNally, Scorch shows the law’s gender binaries when Kes, born female but uncomfortable in her gender so presenting herself as male to a girl she meets online, is accused of gender fraud and sexual abuse. In the eyes of the law a woman can’t rape another woman, as according to the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the penetration can only be done with a penis. Where the law stands on the concept of being gender fluid with regards to accused rape is unclear due to its rarity.

Language is also questioned in Scorch as we learn queer slang, with ‘cute boi’ meaning a biologically female person who presents themselves in a boyish way, often genderqueer. Though the internet provides a safe place to explore or hide gender, when real life romance crashes and burns, Kes is dropped into a seething pile of accusations and assumptions. When the press get a hold of Kes’ story they call her ‘lesbian’, automatically defining her gender as well as her sexuality. They label her before she’s decided, without providing her with a choice.

McNally called herself ‘Scott’ when presenting herself online, forming a relationship over several years with a young girl. Gayle Newland is another accused case of gender fraud. Calling herself ‘Kye’, Newland insisted the woman she had sex with wear a blindfold, and would penetrate her with a prosthetic penis. Newland’s justification was that she was body-conscious, but in preventing her partner from seeing her strap-on, she hid her biological identity. Gavin Haynes writes of women such as Newland and McNally, ‘Theirs were attempts to push back against the physical realities of the world in which they found themselves at an almost atomic level.’ The law is not up-keeping with more modern, fluid understandings of gender. When McNally was taken to court, her judge called her deception ‘selfish and callous’, rather than attempting to understand her reasoning and questioning her gender identity.

Kes’ family’s views aren’t made entirely clear, and the details of the court case yearn to be explained, but Scorch brings to light the lack of support for people going through a gender identity crisis. It is an area that is far too under-researched, and Scorch reveals this lack of understanding, urging us to do something about it.

- KW

Scorch was on at 18.05 at Summerhall through August 28. - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/scorch

Sexual Offenses Act 2003 http://tinyurl.com/zkjnx3o

Justine McNally: http://tinyurl.com/oeomtxk

Queer slang http://tinyurl.com/36jxfr

Is the law on rape sexist?: http://www.blmsolicitors.co.uk/2014/03/is-the-law-on-rape-sexist/

BBC rape briefing: http://tinyurl.com/zjn2hl7

Raped by a woman: http://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a19495/women-raped-by-women/

A forum for expressing gender curiosity: http://emptyclosets.com/forum/gender-identity-expression/154319-gender-curious.html

Understanding your gender identity: http://teenhealthsource.com/giso/understanding-sexual-orientation-gender-identity/

Gayle Newland http://www.theweek.co.uk/65251/what-the-gayle-newland-sex-deceit-case-means-for-transgender-people

Strap-on dildo morality http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/justine-mcnally-scott-gemma-barker-strap-on-dildo-morality

There’s been a modest but welcome uptick in the media’s ability to report sensitively on transgender issues, recently. Outspoken campaigners like journalist Paris Lees have helped dispel some of the very worst cliches of tabloid outrage, celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner have brought a new glamour to trans life, and Stonewall have finally added the ‘T’ in LGBT into their consciousness-raising remit.

But the case of Gayle Newland was too complex and too unusual for newspapers to attempt anything like tact. 19-year-old Newland developed a male online personal and built up a long online friendship, then relationship, with a woman. They met up on multiple occasions, and the woman wore a blindfold during their sexual encounters - before pressing charges for sexual assault when she discovered she’d been ‘tricked’. Following the Newland case, legal observers have pointed out its serious potential ramifications for transgender people: if they don’t disclose their trans status, they could be liable for charges of sexual assault through deception.

Stacey Gregg’s Scorch is directly inspired by the case. But where Newland’s voice has necessarily remained silent, Gregg presents the story entirely from Kes’s point of view. Kes is naive, in love, and incapable of understanding how badly their actions hurt the girl they forms a relationship with. Kes’s life online is a rich community full of resources, help and support for trans teenagers - they make assuming a new gender identity feel natural, and normal. But in the world Kes lives in, it’s anything but: “I feel like an alien”, Kes says.

In one particularly moving passage, Kes reels off all the completely legal ways people can deceive their partners: by hiding the fact they’re married, by giving a false identity, or even just by saying they love them when they don’t. It’s a passage that shows the intricacies of human relationships and gender identities, and the bluntness of the laws designed to govern them.

Newland didn’t claim a trans identity in court. And nor does Kes. In an interview, Gregg has stated that although Scorch intersects with trans questions, it’s a piece that “boils down to something that’s actually much more mundane, which is just misogyny.”  The responses Kes faces from family and friends highlight the fact that trans men are often either invisible, or mistrusted, in a world that’s suspicious of attempts to claim masculinity.

Away from the crystal-clear transformation narratives in mainstream media, gender identity is more murky. Gregg’s piece shades in all its intricacies, and shows how difficult a place the world is for teenagers who aren’t ready to choose their own identity, outside the world of video games.

- AS

Scorch was on at the Edinburgh Fringe, Aug 5-28 https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/scorch

Interview with Stacey Gregg in the Irish Times http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/stage/stacey-gregg-on-gender-identity-and-the-theatre-s-gutting-lack-of-women-1.2424367

Impact of Gayle Newland case on trans rights http://www.theweek.co.uk/65251/what-the-gayle-newland-sex-deceit-case-means-for-transgender-people

Increased risk of mental health issues in transgender young people  https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/transgender-youth-at-risk-for-depression-suicide/

INFINITY POOL // Bea Roberts

“Poor little woman – she is gaping after love like a carp on a kitchen table.”

Emma Barnicott’s life bares many parallels to Emma Bovary’s. Gustave Flaubert’s enduring narrative on adultery, Madame Bovary, is here revisited as an exploration of the role of social media in modern relationships. Bea Roberts' performance has no actors but with the use of a TV, a soundboard, several projectors, an animated PowerPoint Presentation and a variety of physical props, she draws us into an immersive performance.

Emma Barnicott’s life is banal and empty; the daily commute, the microwave dinners and sexless marriage are a painful routine. Emma works in a bathroom fitting company and when asked to man the company’s online help desk, an exchange of emails and a complaint about pipes leads to a virtual romance.

With the ongoing Anthony Weiner sexting scandals leading the news going into the upcoming US elections, it’s easy to see how even those in influential political positions can succumb to the exhilaration and seduction of a simulated relationship. The ability to develop an online augmented alter ego, as Emma does, can become totally absorbing and be a welcome distraction from the trivialities of daily life. Emma’s affair never transcends cyberspace and unlike Sharon Osborne, who recently threatened Ozzy with divorce on finding a slew of amorous emails, her real life relationships are thankfully never affected.

Bea Roberts' show considers the ease with which sexting and technology lubricate virtual betrayal. The loss of sexual intimacy seems inherent in the progression of technology. Bea Roberts addresses how even the most humdrum life can be affected by the evolution of online relationships. In a world of ghosting and negging with no chance for the brain to assess body language or any other sensory information, any perception of tenderness and affection in an online relationship may be distorted or imaginary. (LO)

Infinity Pool: A Modern Retelling of Madame Bovary ran at 16.45 at Bedlam Theatre (Venue 49) - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/infinity-pool-a-modern-retelling-of-madame-bovary

Is Texting or Sexting Cheating?: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/getting-back-out-there/201511/is-texting-or-sexting-cheating

A Look Inside The Insidious And Adulterous World Of Sexting: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/02/sexting-cheating_n_6185288.html

The Toll Sexting Takes on Marriage - Divorce Help: http://divorcehelp360.com/the-toll-sexting-takes-on-marriage/

THE CONVOLUTION OF PIP AND TWIG // PEP

Cryptophasia is the phenomenon of a language developed by twins. At the start of The Convolution of Pip and Twig the consistent, unintelligible muttering suggest these two are among the 50% of twins who have created their personal idioglossia; an idiosyncratic and essentially private language invented and spoken by only a couple of people.

Kara McLane Burke and Siân Richards humble us with an intimate gentle performance that waxes and wanes like the cardboard moon above the stage. Playing identical sisters they transport us to their world, somewhere between Mr. Ben and Rainbow - a childish hedonistic utopia.

After waking entangled from sleep, they dance and complete chores in synchronisation, until Twig is seduced by the moon and slopes off only to be pursued by her sister/twin into the night and the ocean. Clownlike performance and playful physical theatre is complemented by a handmade set: the ocean is enthralling and helps to disperse the overwhelming sense of separation anxiety whenever the two characters are apart. Research shows emotional attachment in twins can become unhealthy with a loss of individualism; this is almost palpable to the audience who feel a genuine philological sense of disconnection when Pip and Twig are apart.

This summer, BBC’s Horizon My Amazing Twin explored the genetic condition neurofibromatosis type 1 and the different effect it had on a set of identical twins, encouraging a discourse around the research studying the differing genetics of identical twins. The Convolution of Pip and Twig explores the twin’s relationship through repetition, as if they are conscious of their intertwined and indistinguishable DNA.

- Lucy Orr

The Convolution of Pip and Twig  ran at 18.40 at SpaceTriplex (Venue 38) until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/convolution-of-pip-and-twig

The Lone Twin: How to Deal With Twin Separation Anxiety: https://healdove.com/mental-health/The-Lone-Twin-How-to-Deal-With-Twin-Separation-Anxiety

Twintuition: Ezra and Adeev Potash at TEDxOmaha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDLoOrdhfAw

Identically Different: Tim Spector at TEDxKingsCollegeLondon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W5SeBYERNI

Becoming a twin... at age 23: Georgy Cohen at TEDxSomerville: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxHCYSOtLyI

1 Language That Only 2 People Speak: The Secret Language Of Twins: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/twins-secret-languages

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

WHITEOUT // Barrowland Ballet

Like so many stories of black-British experience, Whiteout begins with the six dancers shivering against an electronic pulse that seems to scream the word “blizzard”, showering them in icicles. As the soundtrack shifts, so do they, into unison movements that suggest assimilation, before individuals pull away. Once they do, Barrowland Ballet move into more personal territory, a contemplation of bi-racial relationships in which the dancers pair off and seek accommodation within their new couplings, ways to share their cultural backgrounds while maintaining distinct identities.

Choreographer/director Natasha Gilmore began this work thinking about her own experience, particularly as a mother of bi-racial children, and the tone of the resulting work is primarily optimistic. Her children appear in playful films of leapfrogging and rabbit hopping, the adults following their lead; interspersed within Luke Sutherland's restless and inventive soundtrack are folk songs chanted by Jade Adamson and Nandi Bhebhe, weaving African and British roots into a single responsive conversation.

But the group never shy away from portraying the effects on human relations of racist context, as pairs briefly fracture and individual dancers become lost in their own jagged movement. Of these, the most fraught is a scene in which one of the black males thuds and crashes about the stage, holding his head in his hands, while his partner and friends watch, confused and unable to help. It's a reminder of how depression among black men lurks unspoken and often goes untreated.

Whiteout is built as much from a symbiotic relationship between dancers and composer, movement and sound, as it is from thematic idea; yet almost every moment opens up a question. What does it mean when the black female dancer lifts the white male; when the white female dancer stands apart from the group, when the black male dancers square off against each other? It would be easy not to notice the movements that suggest these questions, or to think they had no import, and that in itself delivers a subtle comment on the ways in which racism is dismissed as a matter of perception, rather than a fact that people of colour have to live with. Underlying everything is a sense of longing: that its most positive pictures of racial harmony might be only a few steps away. (MC)

Whiteout is on at 17.00 at ZOO Southside until August 27th. Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/whiteout

On the stigma of depression within the black community: https://www.artefactmagazine.com/2016/03/19/why-is-depression-stigmatised-within-the-black-community/

And the taboo specifically among African-American men: https://www.lucidatreatment.com/blog/mental-health/african-american-men-depression/

On systemic racism in Britain, how it affects black communities and how to challenge it: http://leejasper.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/racism-is-dividing-britain-and-denial.html

Poet Claudia Rankine on racism and perception: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/27/claudia-rankine-poetry-racism-america-perception

Academic Sara Ahmed on racism and perception: https://feministkilljoys.com/2014/02/17/the-problem-of-perception/

TORCH // Flipping the Bird

The setting for Torch is a narrow one: its narrator has locked herself in a toilet cubicle at a nightclub, unable to summon the confidence to storm the dancefloor despite plenty of shots and a snort of coke. Within its confines, she journeys across her past, reflecting on the relationships and sexual experiences that shaped and eroded her sense of self. It's a history of disappointment, mostly: whatever she wanted of the men who paraded through her life, she never got it. All that remains of them is a set of lifeless mementoes, a jumper maybe, recording their interaction.

But the disappointment is also in herself: reaching back to her teenage years, she wonders at her youthful exuberance, revels in the memory of her ease in her own body. Having sex for the first time, she says, “I finally understood my own power.” That teenager didn't hide her body behind baggy t-shirts, and didn't need a man's permission to do anything. More than once the woman cries out that she wants that teenage self back.

The experiences described in Phoebe Eclair-Powell's text are common enough to feel like archetypes; performed by Jess Mabel Jones, iridescent with gold glitter strewn across her eyes and lips, they gain a potent charge. Interspersed between each anecdote is the song this woman might have belted out in her kitchen, or listened to on an iPod while crying on the nightbus: some morose, some cheeky, none of them specifically relevant to the story but useful all the same. There's some fascinating neuroscience describing the ways in which music – especially the music heard as a teenager – impacts on the human brain: the nostalgia connectors that develop as a result are the same ones triggered by this show.

The text doesn't do much sexual-politics work: the affairs described are all heteronormative; and although the woman remembers with regret not kissing a woman she found attractive, her desire for lesbian experience is vague. And although the work is feminist on the surface, it's noticeable that the woman seeks self-definition in sexual relationships rather than intellect, work or non-physical engagement with the world. In essence, Torch is itself a torch song: a shot of emotion directed straight at the heart. (MC)

Torch is on at 20.50 at Underbelly Cowgate until August 28th. Hearing Loop - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/torch

On the lack of scientific research into female sexuality: http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/08/03/sexual_orientation_in_women_why_so_little_scientific_research.html

On lesbianism and sexual fluidity: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/nov/26/lesbianism-women-sexual-fluidity-same-sex-experiences

Questions raised by women equating sex with power: http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/12/power-in-sexuality-problem/

The neuroscience of musical nostalgia: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/08/musical_nostalgia_the_psychology_and_neuroscience_for_song_preference_and.html

On the benefits of nostalgia: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/science/what-is-nostalgia-good-for-quite-a-bit-research-shows.html?ref=science&_r=1