My Head Hurts

My Head Hurts explored grief beyond that which stems from the loss of a person. In this talk chaired by Michael Bassett, the speakers shared their experiences of grief:

Artist, Jim Lockey spoke of ‘feeling orphaned’in the seeming conflict of being both an artist and a Christian, through the suspicion of a liberal art world towards churchgoers. He accepted the feelings of loneliness and loss that ensue. The latter is reflected in his work Boat, also exhibited at Normal? There he comments on the ‘entropy of all things’ by constructing and setting sail in a cardboard boat which inevitably disintegrates. 

Occupational Therapist Rayya Ghul relayed the grief experienced by her refugee parents through geographical changes and cultural shock.  Her German mother’s way of coping was to enact an elaborate, traditional German Christmas every year, even changing the curtains. Ghul also expressed her grief in ageing and accepting ‘the loss of a past that cannot be had and the loss of hopes for a future that is no longer possible’.

Clinical Psychologist Reinhard Guss raised the notion of political grief in terms of the current US presidency and Brexit. His own grief, as a German who calls the UK home, stems from being in a place where he is no longer welcome.  He remarked that although there seemed to be a pressure to ‘work’ on grieving or to refer to stages or psychological models, in reality the ways of grieving are less structured.

The panel all pointed to acceptance as key in coping with grief.  Rituals, in their widest sense, such as Lockey’s creating Boat or through the performative aspect of Ghul’s mother’s German Christmas may act to assuage grief.  My sense is that although every grief has a shape of its own and cannot be easily boxed or wittingly healed, and certainly not to a convenient timeline, through acceptance and practices like these there lies a possibility for its eventual transmutation.  

- Lubna Gem Arielle

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Boat - Jim Lockey

Ephemeral Art, What a Beautiful Thing - That Creative Feeling

Why the Five Stages of Grief Are Wrong - Psychology Today

Pema Chodron / When Things Fall Apart - BrainPickings

Physical Effects of Grief - BBC News

Talking to Grief - Denise Levertov

Grief is the Thing with Feathers - Max Porter

MADE IN BRITAIN // Tez Ilyas

'Remember how no one got blown up at London 2012? I did that!' Comedian Tez Ilyas is referring to his Civil Service role on the Olympic security team. But he likes to leave no unmentionable unmentioned during his show Made in Britain.

Today Ilyas has left office life to pursue a career in comedy. His set explores what it means to be a British Muslim - in a post-Brexit period when anyone considered an outsider finds themselves living under an unprecedentedly critical spotlight.

Such hostility leads to long-term impacts on health and welfare. UK figures show that people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent experience much higher levels of some diseases, with scientists identifying experiences of racism and discrimination as crucial issues.

Nonetheless, recent opinion has shifted blame for community woes to minorities themselves. Ilyas gives short shrift to the former head of the Racial Equality Commission, Trevor Phillips, whose warning that Muslims were 'failing to integrate' played easily into the hands of a scaremongering press.

Ironically, it was the tragic Paris attacks that provided Ilyas with his first media break, a spot on BBC Radio 4's The Now Show that propelled him towards his current recognition. Now, he seems determined to use the limelight to highlight big issues that resonate individually with those who share a similar upbringing - but make everyone laugh.

Large families, parental pressures and arranged marriages are all personal experiences he chooses to talk about in this show – but llyas does not assume he is a spokesperson for the Asian community - indeed, he says there isn’t just one British Asian community. But his voice is significant in a country where research shows that direct and indirect racism damage children’s development, in ways that shape their entire lives. (RM)

Made In Britain ran at Pleasance Courtyard until August 28th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/tez-ilyas-made-in-britain 

Hate crime following the referendum: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-eu-referendum-racial-racism-abuse-hate-crime-reported-latest-leave-immigration-a7104191.html

Research by Yvonne Kelly, Professor of Lifecourse Epidemiology at UCL, into the impact of racial discrimination on child health: http://childofourtimeblog.org.uk/tag/racism/

PDF on UCL research into ethnicity and health: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/icls/publications/bn/ethnicity

Coverage of Trevor Phillips’ remarks about the Muslim community failing to integrate: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/10/uk-muslim-ghettoes-warning/

Has multiculturalism failed in the UK? Not really: article by Professor Anthony Heath: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/10/multiculturalism-uk-research

JOAN // Milk Presents

In ‘Mind, Modernity and Madness’, Liah Greenfeld writes that “A widely held idea (say, that hell awaits those who eat flesh on Fridays, or that all men are created equal) is no less a reality for people in the community holding the idea than the Atlantic Ocean”. Her bracingly forthright sociological study goes on to dismiss those who “diagnose entire cultures as psychotic...retroactively pronounce medieval saints schizophrenics”.

It’s a helpful thought to bear in mind when hearing the story of Joan of Arc. It’s a historical fact that a teenage peasant girl with no military background presided over a period of astonishing success for the French army in the 13th century -- while claiming to be taking directions from God. Accounts of the time stress her femininity, purity and delicacy, as a holy maiden who was literally heaven sent.

Lucy J. Skilbeck’s play makes her something a little tougher. Where medieval commentators were keen to emphasise that she only dressed as a man to preserve her chastity and safety, drag king LoUis CYfer embraces the masculinity of a woman who charged into battle in a specially made suit of armour.

Skilbeck’s focus on gender identity shows the power of religious zeal to overcome other culturally ingrained ideas, like the need for women to be meek and submissive. Medieval saints could (often literally) float over gender norms by dint of divine intervention. But medieval ideas on gender were also surprisingly modern: themes of gender transformation fill romances, while scientists believed that physical exercise, sexual desire or even just excessive heat could transform women into men. Skilbeck’s approach makes Joan’s approach both natural and deliberate: a series of tiny decisions, as well as one broad ecstatic creation. CYfer is an acclaimed performer on the drag cabaret scene, and this experience shows in a brilliant observed set of comic songs and physical performances. CYfer parodies all kinds of men, from a gruff father to a camp priest, and borrows their mannerisms: their self-consciousness heightened by the mirrors that surround the stage.

Joan becomes the world’s first drag king, a joyful anachronism heightened by CYfer’s Tank Girl t-shirt and 21st century song choices. Skilbeck’s story sticks close to its medieval source too, though, spelling out the painful details of victory in battle, then backlash from the religious establishment. In medieval times, as now, the freedom to step outside prescribed female roles is dependent on cultural mood. And when the mass shared belief in Joan’s divinity fades, so does Joan’s ability to perform a gender that’s artificial and hugely natural, at once.

- AS

Joan was on at Underbelly at Edinburgh Fringe, 5-28th August https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/joan

‘Mind, Modernity and Madness’ by Liah Greenfeld https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Le4anj8kJPkC&dq=medieval+saints+psychosis

Ideas of gender transformation in medieval fiction http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1813&context=mff

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

BUBBLE SCHMEISIS // Nick Cassenbaum

Cultural identity is made out of little, everyday things, just as the character of a neighbourhood is made up of the everyday rather than the exceptional. The best sign of gentrification in London’s East End isn’t the Cereal Killer Café, but the slow closure of its greasy spoons and corner shops and their replacement with more Pret A Mangers. Nick Cassenbaum’s performance is about Jewish identity, and the self-care ritual of the Schvitz, an intergenerational steam bath that unfolds as a psychogeographic narrative of the Jewish East End. It has orbiting interests of personal, urban and cultural history, and through them questions the identities of individuals, groups and cities.

Biographic detail is specific and explored, but the historical sweep of Cassenbaum’s journey intersects with many other stories. Even some 400 miles from London, Edinburgh audiences recognise the narrative of old rituals falling away, as cities change and traditions atrophy. Although the schvitz specifically may have a future; In other cities the steam rooms have opened to all, male and female, from whatever nationality, and had some success. Perhaps the key might be to let the tradition change, rather than hold on to something already slipping away.

In doing so though something specific and historic will be lost. The schvitz is an old-world thing, a wash that is as much about taking the time to relax as it is getting clean. In a constantly connected city, with few respites from modernity, the importance of a space for discussion and a location to be at ease with your own body in, is a rare and ancient luxury.

- LC

Bubble Schmeisis played at Summerhall through August 28 - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/bubble-schmeisis

Nick Cassenbaum - http://www.nickcassenbaum.com

Schvitz (from Yiddish) - http://www.jewish-languages.org/jewish-english-lexicon/words/483

 Having A Schvitz (Jewish Chronicle) - http://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-features/143194/having-a-shvitz-working-a-nostalgic-head-steam

 New York Schvitz Resurgence - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/nyregion/after-124-years-the-russian-and-turkish-baths-are-still-a-hot-spot.html

We Need to Talk About Gentrification (Lifehacker) - http://www.lifehacker.co.uk/2015/10/02/the-battle-of-the-cereal-killer-cafe-and-why-we-need-to-talk-about-gentrification

I WAS A TEENAGE CHRISTIAN // Katy Brand

You Lost Me is the title of a 2011 book by David Kinnaman, who runs a large market research company in North America. In it, he describes the widespread phenomenon of young people disconnecting from churches, and explores the reasons for their departure.

Comedian Katy Brand is pretty clear why she left the Buckinghamshire church she so strongly identified with from the age of 13. In I Was A Teenage Christian, she talks about her gradual disillusionment with leaders who banned Harry Potter, and who flatly disapproved of her choosing to take a degree in theology.

Hostility to debate is a clear problem identified in Kinnaman’s research among churches – particularly in the area of science. In Britain and America alike, there is often little choice for a young person faced with an apparent conflict between a fundamentalist, literal interpretation of the creation story, and the evolutionary science they need to pass their exams.

Yet in the early days of her church-going, Katy Brand reports feeling a delight that she was part of something that seemed important – delighted enough that she would attend church three or four times a week. She has said in interviews that she can see how fundamentalism can seem attractive and "exactly why" young people are being radicalised at the moment.

To understand why some do become radicalised is proving controversial for the UK government, however. Criticisms of a parliamentary report included a failure to define terms like radical and extreme, or to recognise the complex social factors that might cause anyone – not just Muslims – to radicalise.

But research with people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin living in the UK has revealed a mental health perspective to the debate. In his work with 600 people in Muslim communities, Professor Kamaldeep Bhui of at Queen Mary University of London found a positive correlation between extremist sympathies and being young, in full-time education, relative social isolation, and having a tendency towards depressive symptoms.

While radicalisation doubtless has many causes, this is important information for all looking to understand young people grappling with a sense that they are lost.

- Rebecca Mileham

I Was A Teenage Christian ran at Pleasance Courtyard until August 26th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/katy-brand-i-was-a-teenage-christian-2

David Kinnaman’s research company: https://www.barna.com/research/

Interview with Katy Brand: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jul/04/katy-brand-teenage-christian-comedy-interview

Home Affairs Select Committee report into Radicalisation: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmhaff/135/13509.htm

Mental health aspect to radicalisation: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630160-200-radicalisation-a-mental-health-issue-not-a-religious-one/

Depression a factor in radicalisation: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11164182/British-jihadis-are-depressed-lonely-and-need-help-says-Prof.html

LIFTED // Triad Pictures

The recent terror attacks in France and Belgium, have assured that Islamophobia is on the rise but it’s Fife that proves the culture battleground for Lifted. Ikram Gilani plays drug dealing secular Scottish Muslim Anwar with humor and intensity and the small hot stage at theSpace @ Surgeons Hall makes the audience genuinely feel part of Anwar's interrogation by invisible forces at Glenrothes Police Station.

Anwar is being interrogated about his acquaintance Moody. Originally from Kuwait, Moody had come to Scotland to study but flunked out. Now Anwar suspects Moody has been hauled in for questioning due to his suspect heritage. Through a series of flashbacks we revisit their relationship bonded over magic mushrooms and shared distaste for Scottish weather, while joining the current discourse on Islamohobia, drug dealing, homophobia within Islamic communities and the war against terrorism. Even with Obama’s best intentions, Guantanamo Bay is still open and while society continues to see stereotypes as a security threat, the kind of persecution Anwar and Moody face will be firmly entrenched.

Lifted explores current discourses such as personal, religious, cultural and national identity, as well as the harassment of stereotypes. As Anwar describes Moody’s disillusionment with both western and eastern societies we are given an insight as to how these two friends found a solution to their difficulties, though ultimately falling foul of both cultures. This lose/lose cultural paradigm is most present in the continuing harassment and scolding of women seen to be wearing too little and the violent disrobing of woman wearing too much (burkinis).

- Lucy Orr

Lifted is on at 11.05 at theSpace @ Surgeons Hall (Venue 53) - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/lifted

Dalia Mogahed: What do you think when you look at me?: https://www.ted.com/talks/dalia_mogahed_what_do_you_think_when_you_look_at_me?language=en

Scots Muslims speak out over racist abuse after terror attacks: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14653092.Verbal_abuse__violence_and_suspicion__prominent_Scots_Muslims_speak_out_as_racism_ramps_up_amid_summer_of_terror/

Surge in racist attacks on Scots Muslims: http://www.thenational.scot/news/surge-in-racist-attacks-on-scots-muslims.10287

Can We Finally Talk About Muslim Homophobia in Britain?: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/can-we-finally-talk-about_b_828037.html

TRIPLE THREAT // Lucy McCormick

McCormick and her Girl Squad boys run amuck in this whistlestop of the New Testament: as an affirmation of agency over our queer/female bodies, and in defiance of an ecclesiastical canon of morality politics and re/oppression.

Triple Threat drives McCormick’s indefatigable lack of inhibition right into our societal schemata of disgust, offense and body-squeamishness – in this country historically interwoven with Christian teaching and the influence of the Church. Her retelling of the story of Doubting Thomas - ‘reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side’ (John 20:27, King James) – culminates in anal digital penetration. We applaud the hilarity and the shock – can you believe she took it that far?? – but accept as comic foil the actual scriptural basis, where Jesus invites Thomas to put his hands inside the still-gaping wounds from his crucifixion. An authentic restaging of that passage would probably be a bit much for even the most bloodwork-hardened Fringe-goer.

For all the prudishness of their most ardent followers, religious texts are awash with bodily functions, pain, blood and sex. Their rituals provide ripe ground for reappropriation, by and for the bodies marginalised and policed by their archaic, literal interpretation. This reappropriation is especially urgent in the work of queer artists, such as Ron Athey whose performance offers abject resistance to the US government’s (lack of) response to the 80s/90s HIV epidemic. Deploying different devices and affects, Triple Threat makes a playground of the stand-off between religious conservatism and queer and women’s sexualities and bodies; as necessary as ever with religious institutions and individuals still lobbying “pro-life” but against the availability of PrEP.

- HM

Triple Threat is on at 20.10 at Underbelly Cowgate until August 28th (not 15th or 22nd). Hearing Loop, BSL - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/lucy-mccormick-triple-threat

On GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN, the performance collective McCormick constitues one third of: http://www.getinthebackofthevan.com/the-van/

Owen Jones in The Guardian on PrEP and valuing gay lives: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/02/nhs-prep-hiv-drugs-gay-mens-lives

The Herald on the Church's blocking of efforts to halt the spread of AIDS in the 80s: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14631879.Churches_opposed_efforts_to_halt_AIDS_deaths_in_1980s_Scotland__secret_papers_reveal/

Blog on the policing of women’s bodies and modesty, on Patheos (dedicated to discussion of issues around faith): www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/2012/12/modesty-body-policing-and-rape-culture-connecting-the-dots/

Pleading in the Blood, on the performance work of Ron Athey: http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/publishing/pleading-in-the-blood-the-art-of-ron-athey