21 Pornographies // Mette Ingvartsen

The performance pivots on a body harsh in the light, with power, sex and violence evoked through the calm narration of decadent sexuality. Dukes, kings and magistrates taking part in an orgy of privilege are slowly revealed through a slow drip of context, delivered by the artist in a measured storyteller’s tone. Ingvartsen orients the audience within the geography of the narrative. The room within her description is layered over the top of the one we sit in. Watching quietly becomes participation and culpability, a rehearsal of our own participation in the desiring looks that run under the societies we walk through. It reveals our acceptance of sexualised interactions and of abuse used as a plot point, and the fictionalisation of experiences that are a reality to thousands across the world.  It raises the unequal dynamics of power at play in who gets to see and who gets to be seen as a sexual being.

Part of a series of choreographies (the ‘Red Pieces’) that explore sexuality, Ingvartsen draws those listening into the decadence she narrates. But this storytelling continually contrasts against the fierce and sudden use of movement. Ingvartsen barks like a dog through swift image flashes, unsettling the conventions of interaction with the audience set up moments before. Bare skin glows under naked strip light, and smoke, strobe and dance provide a parallel narrative to the text the artist recites. Occasionally aligning but rarely exact, the significance of the movement is one that builds to question looking itself through the brightness of light. Watching the body spin becomes impossible to sustain, forcing the audience to look away as their eyes involuntarily close against the glare. Noise explodes forth without warning to disrupt the passive listening to stories of sexual atrocity.

The dissonant combination of text and movement requires careful attention to the questions it asks. The piece offers no solution or remedy but stages and makes explicit the tension within the display of the body in a culture of desiring looks.

-      Lewis Church

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Mette Ingvartsen - 21 Pornographies

Mette Ingvartsen - Delving into Dance

The Voice of the Storyteller - The New York Times

Sex, Health and Society - The Conversation

The Representation of Women in Advertising - AdAge

Keeping My Kidneys // Mindy Raf

Shows at the Fringe are often ABOUT a singular thing: there’s a show about grief, a show about virginity, a show about anxiety, a show about coming out. Perhaps it is a marketing or PR strategy which makes the show ABOUT a singular thing, as its makes it easier to digest and to sell tickets, or it reflects the kernel of an idea which started an artist’s journey on a particular work. If Mindy Raf used the death of her mother as a starting point for her storytelling/stand up set Keeping My Kidneys, her detours, her ramblings, her journeys down the rabbit hole demonstrate that this is anything but just a show about a singular thing.  Instead, Raf makes a bold case for understanding how we are always all of our identities, and how these identities intersect, inform, challenge and support each other in exciting ways.

Along Raf’s journey through self-discovery and self-love are pointed and important revelations about the challenging and absurd realities of the American healthcare system (and its inability to deal with multiple health needs in a holistic way), midwestern Jewishness and family, and marginalized sexual identities (with her reflections on polyamory and pansexuality). As the fight for recognition and equality for LGBTQI+ people internationally and in the UK continues, Raf highlights the continued discomfort for those who fall (or stay) out of the mainstream – with playful conversations about biphobia and normative monogamy which remind us of how far we have to go in terms of true self-determination and pride. Raf challenges the idea that when we are dealing with one issue, or fighting one fight, we are not still engaged in a multitude of questions, oppressions, desires and conflicts. This confluence of influence is what makes Keeping My Kidneys unique in its storytelling: Raf is completely resistant to this being a show ABOUT one thing. Take it all, or leave it all, excitingly Raf has faith in her audience (and perhaps the world in 2017) that they can handle the complex nature of reality. 

- Brian Lobel

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Keeping My Kidneys - Mindy Raf

Polyamory’s Cultural Moment - NPR 

Ongoing Healthcare Debate and the Anxiety It Causes - New York Times

Cannabis Lube

Deathbed Promises on Reddit

Lena Waithe on Master of None and Coming Out Over Time - Vulture

Out // Rachael Young with Dwayne Antony

Rachael Young and Dwayne Antony choreograph their challenge to homophobia and transphobia in Caribbean communities through a stylised repetition of tasks and dance steps pushed to the limits of endurance. Their two bodies exist in relation, not only in the obvious moments of unison or canon, but in the instances of quiet as well, in the peeling of oranges and the unzipping of shoes. Two bodies, poised and beautiful, unapologetically black and queer. One of the most impactful moments of the performance features the voice of a pastor haranguing the ‘immorality’ of homosexuality and of trans identities, looped and warped to accompany a lean and bend, in and out of a strict band of light. The performers faces appear and recede, into light and out of sight into darkness. The hateful narrative of the soundtrack loses its legibility through its rhythmic hijack.

Out engages with the legacy of colonial laws that still permeate the legal systems of many Caribbean countries, buggery laws that foster and endorse a wider homophobia. The histories that affect cultural perceptions of sexuality involve the world, and the contemporary experience of individuals in diasporic communities echoes the legacy of varied oppression. Whilst Western societies congratulate themselves for increasing (but still not universal) tolerance, the impact of its role in the origination of these attitudes must be still acknowledged and reflected on.

The fierceness of the movement in Out, the physical conviction and relentless power reflects an often-unacknowledged strength in difference. It reflects the egregiousness of masculinist and cisnormative dialogues, and the fragility of cultural stereotypes. These different signifiers circle throughout, race and sexuality, bodies and power. Dancing in abandon to dancehall in the opening, a genre that became a musical byword for homophobia in the 1990s, the two performers assert their place in wider culture, the importance of their identities and an affirmation of their selves.  

-       Lewis Church

Links Relevant to this diagnosis:

Out - Rachael Young

LGBT Rights in Jamaica – Equaldex

Being Black and Gay: The Illusion of Inclusion – The Fact Site

 Being Black and LGBT in Britain (2016) – Maroon News

Britain Can't Just Reverse the Homophobia It Exported - Guardian

5 Guys Chillin' // King's Head Theatre and Em Lou Productions

As you check into 5 Guys Chillin’, you are handed two condoms and told not to use them during the performance. There’s some irony in the joke as the characters in the show probably wouldn’t want them.

The play is a snapshot of five guys during a chemsex party. This is usually defined as sex where the drugs (G or GHB, crystal meth and mephedrone) are taken before and during a prolonged ‘chill-out’ to prolong and enhance it. As with any other play, it would be wrong to extrapolate too widely, to suggest that it represented all in the “gay community”, itself a lazy term sometimes wrongly used interchangeably with “gay scene.” Both terms imply a complete uniformity of gay and bisexual experience. Nevertheless, a report on a survey of 1000 gay men in London in Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham suggested that a tenth had had chemsex in the past 4 weeks. Reading into the actual survey though shows that the sample was recruited via “on-line social and sexual networking sites”, so it is unclear how representative it is.

The characters of 5 Guys Chillin’ reminisce about past fuck parties, and the drugs that allow them to party orgasm-free for days. Their conversation is only about sex. Most of them are HIV+, but they are fairly blasé about this as they have a low viral load. They prefer riding bareback anyway and are not all concerned about telling new partners their HIV status; one thinks all gay men should be HIV+ – after all PrEP is the solution. Other STDs are dismissed as curable inconveniences.

Gradually as the drugs start to work, individual differences emerge, with small glimpses of the men's back stories. Cultural pressures led to one guy to getting married, a set-up he has mixed feeling about, even though his wife knows he has sex with men. Others display wistful reflections on a past life without drugs. The guy who feels that being fisted helps someone to connect deeply inside him remains resolutely unquestioning – no regrets there. Strangely, much of this hedonism is reminiscent of attitudes during the 14th century to the Black Death, when desperate people who saw no future for humanity lived for the day and entirely for themselves. The guys in 5 Guys Chillin’ are cavalier about others, but also fatalistic about themselves.

- Alistair Lax

Links Relevant to this Diagnosis:

5 Guys Chillin'

What is Chemsex? - New Scientist

The Chemsex Study - Sigmar Research

Chemsex, HIV and STI Transmission - British Medical Journal

Personal Testimony of Chemsex Experience - London Evening Standard

Touch // DryWrite

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

- Rebecca West

In her new play Touch, Vicky Jones explores what the fruits of feminism are, and questions who has the real power in a relationship. Dee, a 33-year-old single woman, has left a failed relationship in Wales to establish herself and make a life in London. She tries to connect with herself and build meaningful connections through a variety of online dating sites, but each liaison widens the gap between her expectations and reality.

Dee confronts Miles, an older man who is part of a group involved with S&M, and argues that he is trying to make her weak. ‘It’s no fun for me if you are weak’ he responds, because that is the game. We pretend we are strong to be mastered by another. Although Dee talks as if she is in control of each relationship, she is actually a victim of what her partners want from her. Eddie, the first man we meet on stage, tells her that ‘there are woman out there who are doing better than you at being a woman. Who enjoy being a woman. And who have their fucking shit together’. But getting her shit together is the very reason Dee rented her tiny bedsit in London.

The big question becomes one of what being a woman is supposed to be in this liberal, forward-thinking twenty-first century. As Elf Lyons writes:

You can’t use multiple relationships to fill the void and give you the gratification that you should be able to give yourself. More love doesn’t mean better love. If you are dating multiple people in order to enhance your self-worth, you end up feeling like out-of-date hummus, feeling jealous anytime anyone chooses to spend time with anyone else, resulting in you treating your partners badly and without respect. 

And this is exactly what happens not just to Dee, but to far too many single thirty-something women, with their biological clock ticking, their hormones buzzing and constant reminders that they are not cohabiting, reproducing, or being what they thought they would be at this stage of their lives. 

Some of the confusion rests with the new generation of men who support the concepts of feminism and yet do not know what is expected of them as partners. As Mark White writes in Psychology Today 

It is difficult for men, especially those of us who appreciate and embrace the importance of being respectful and considerate toward women, to balance those attitudes with the animalistic, non-rational expressions of passion and desire that women want from us.

That is the dilemma faced by singles today. We have commercialized sex to the point where partners are touted as objects to shop for on sites like Tinder or in pornography for momentary excitement and passion, but when it comes to the long haul we are at a loss. No one knows how to react. Just where is the line between subservience and co-operation, dominance and abusive control? 

-       Lynn Ruth Miller

Touch is at the Soho Theatre, London until August 26th 2017. A new production of DryWrite's  Fleabag is at Underbelly, George Square during the Fringe from 21st-27th August.

 

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Touch - Soho Theatre

Fleabag - Underbelly George Square

Why Men Find It So Hard to Understand What Women Want - Psychology Today

Women’s Attitudes Toward Sex - Huffington Post

Has Feminism Worked? - Telegraph

Elf Lyons - Polyamory: A New Way to Love

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/

TRIGGER // Christeene

Christeene comes riding in on an inner pony, an imaginary animal representing self-esteem and unapologetic sexuality. Each night, working whilst a shedload of explosives erupt from Edinburgh castle above her, Christeene is at work to create the ambience of the kind of sex disco that you always wished you were invited to but are not quite convinced you’d know what to do at if you were. The inner-pony is a my-little metaphor of freedom, a call to abandon proprieties and niceties in favour of a new kind of holistic sexual transcendence.

The music is really good, and the audience shuffle their feet if nothing else. But the sections of funkenstein’s monster hallucinations are also accompanied by quiet monologues on Christine’s surreal version of mindfulness training. That’s when she declaims like a motivational speaker that we accept ourselves and each other. Christeene’s sex-positive pro-dirty celebration reminds me of the work of other incredible artists creating similarly dishevelled celebrations of sexual politics. It shares a joyous aesthetic and enjoyable seriousness with Annie Sprinkle and Beth Steven’s work on ‘ecosexuality’, and a messianic zeal with David Hoyle’s recent activism around mental health and political engagement. Like The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein’s work, and Lucy McCormick’s, it is unflinching in the bodily nature of its political undertow.

Christeene’s aesthetic and language is uncompromising, but its generosity is apparent – if you found your way into the room then you’re part of the tribe. The irresistibly catchy rap is one part of it, but it comes with a call to self-care and self-pleasure.

- Lewis Church

Trigger played Underbelly, Cowgate through August 28 - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/christeene-trigger

Christeene - http://christeenemusic.com

Christeene ‘Tears from My Pussy’ Video - https://vimeo.com/32751567

What’s Sex got to do with Mindfulness? - http://www.mindful.org/whats-sex-got-to-do-with-mindfulness/

Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stevens’ Ecosexuality - http://www.feministtimes.com/feminism-has-not-happened-yet-an-interview-with-annie-sprinkle/

David Hoyle Interview with Chelsea Theatre - http://www.chelseatheatre.org.uk/interview-david-hoyle/

The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein - http://www.thefamousomg.com

Lucy McCormick ‘Fringe Messiah’ - https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/sep/01/lucy-mccormick-triple-threat-comedy-autumn-arts-preview

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

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/

TWO MAN SHOW // RashDash

There is a crisis in masculinity. Men can no longer be bearded, belching monsters, retreating to their man-caves at the merest whiff of emotion. Women are in charge now, and men now have to stop solving problems with their fists. They have talk to each other. They have to have feelings, damn it. This is the initial premise of Two Man Show – actually a three-woman piece. But, just as the title of the show misleads us as to the gender identities of the performers, the show itself tells us less about what it is to be a 21st century man, and more about what it is to be a woman.
 
Following a quick overview of how the patriarchy has ruined everything, we see women portrayed as goddesses, as muses, on pedestals, as voiceless figurines. We see women acting out the characters of two brothers, struggling to communicate about death and impending fatherhood, jaws and hearts hardened and set against each other.
 
Most of the show involves the two main performers and creators – Helen Goalen and Abbi Greenland – either topless or completely naked. It seems potentially gratuitous, titillating or desensitising. Then as women playing men, standing about in their boxer shorts in the morning, it seems fine. After all, men are allowed to walk around in just their pants, aren’t they?
 
It’s not the only ‘un-ladylike’ behaviour the audience is asked to confront. Women swear. We fight. We fuck. We make our own rules. We rule our own lives now, thank you very much. But does this mean we’re no longer allowed to be feminine? To use our power softly rather than screaming and shouting? Two Man Show speaks to the very heart of identity yet acknowledges that sometimes there are no words to say how we really feel.

- Dr Kat Arney

Two Man Show ran at Summerhall until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/two-man-show

RashDash: http://www.rashdash.co.uk/

Thoughts from RashDash about on-stage nudity and playing men: http://www.rashdash.co.uk/thoughts/two-man-show-week-four-diary/

Time – The Crisis in Masculinity: http://time.com/4339209/masculinity-crisis/

Ms Magazine – Empowering Femininity: http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/07/28/empowering-femininity/

PUSSYFOOTING // Knotworks

Five self-identified non-men interrogate the tropes of womanhood, the limits and pressures of gender and the political ramifications of their bodies, built from a research process of interviews and workshops. Pussyfooting rehearses the core concerns of contemporary feminism, of the positions taken and opinions thrown on University campuses, internet message boards and in the corner boxes of broadsheets who should do better. It smartly favours autobiography, keeping the focus on the lives of the performers and their peers, a policy that sacrifices some intersectional awareness in favour of personal authenticity. The piece questions the expectations of family and schoolmates, highlights the difficulty and necessity of gender assertion and enjoys the community found amongst university peers through the first steps of the development of an artistic practice.
 
Pussyfooting addresses tropes of female identity in meme-like fashion, short humorous moments of insight that survey the depressingly vast catalogue of problems perpetrated by a clueless culture of patriarchy. Any one of the issues referenced might be a full show; the intolerance and misunderstanding of sexual orientation, the disempowerment of women even over the agency of their clothing choices (seen so vividly and disturbingly now in France’s burkini ban) or the deft undermining of women’s voices as authoritative or knowledgeable about ‘male’ subjects. Similarly, the show enacts a challenge of the logical fallacy that a woman is defined by female genitals, or periods, or not having a penis. As the fringe happens this year in the shadow of the Rio Olympics, the interrogation of gender and identity is brought into sharper relief by the shameful questioning of South African sprinter Caster Semenya’s fitness to race by pundits and the press. The performers encourage the audience to question uncritical assumptions of fixed biological definition by referencing women who identify as such without adhering to prescribed biology or meaningless societal conventions.

- Lewis Church

Pussyfooting is on at 20.10 at Paradise in the Vault until August 28th. Wheelchair Acces, Level Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets, Relaxed Performances - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/pussyfooting

Knotworks Theatre: http://knotworksox.tumblr.com
 
Burkini Ban/Clothing Agency: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/burkini-swimwear-ban-france-nice-armed-police-hijab-muslim-a7206776.html
 
Understanding the Caster-Semenya Controversy: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/sports/caster-semenya-800-meters.html?_r=0
 
The Sporting Spectacle (Jennifer Doyle), Capturing Semenya: https://thesportspectacle.com/2016/08/16/capturing-semenya/

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

HOT BROWN HONEY

First impressions of Hot Brown Honey are misleading. There's a merchandise stall selling earrings made of guitar plectrums, a honeycomb of beige lampshades forms their set, the show begins with a noisy hip-hop call and response: all the signs seem to point to an irreverent, high-octane, low-content pop video of a show. But then DJ/MC Busty Beatz does three things: she declares it time to “heed the mother”, shouts “fuck the patriarchy” and soberly reads out a feminist statement by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Those first impressions are overturned, the assumptions underlying them challenged, the tone of radicalism set for the rest of the show.

Based in Australia, Hot Brown Honey are a collective of all-sizes women of colour on a mission: to deliver “black feminist truth” and “cultural awareness training” while subjecting received white feminism and unconscious colonial-supremacist thinking to close interrogation. That they do all this using the tools of irreverence and high-octane pop culture ensures that their message can reach further, to a general and age-diverse audience who might not even be fans of Beyonce, let alone poet and activist Audre Lorde. The group take a historical approach to burlesque, which was used to lampoon modern politics before it mutated into a general word for striptease. Bodies definitely appear almost-naked and sexuality is rampant, but there is always a clearly articulated political purpose behind this flaunting: one that bypasses individual parties or leaders, and instead digs to the very foundations of capitalist-patriarchal structural oppression.

At the lighter end of the scale, there's a song about black women's hair that goes through a number of musical styles before finishing with thrashing, head-banging hair metal. At the most poignant, there's an aerial routine which uses the bondage of looped ropes to inspire empathy with the women silenced by their experience of domestic violence. In between they debunk romanticised fantasies of the African motherland, condemn the ease with which white holiday-makers vomit entitlement over other countries, and reject the hollow chatter of those with “two cents to put in but not common sense”. Throughout, erudition and entertainment are kept in balance, with quotes from other key black feminist thinkers, including Indigenous Australian Lilla Watson, demonstrating the group's respect for and solidarity with their intellectual foremothers. Hot Brown Honey's work might never be catalogued in the library of feminist academia, but as long as the female body – especially the body of colour – remains objectified, their expression of radical politics will be no less essential. (MC)

Hot Brown Honey are on at various times at Assembly Roxy until August 28th (not 22nd). Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/hot-brown-honey

Excerpt from 'We Should All Be Feminists' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/adichie.html

Excerpt from Audre Lorde's 'The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action': https://iambecauseweare.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/the-transformation-of-silence-into-language-and-action-excerpt-by-audre-lorde/

A potted biography of Lilla Watson: https://lillanetwork.wordpress.com/

Beyonce's Formation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfMlFxrMb18

Dita von Teese's brief history of burlesque: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/a-brief-history-of-burlesque-471288.html

A basic reading list on race and racism: http://citizenshipandsocialjustice.com/2015/07/10/curriculum-for-white-americans-to-educate-themselves-on-race-and-racism/

On the hideous whiteness of Brexit: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2733-on-the-hideous-whiteness-of-brexit-let-us-be-honest-about-our-past-and-our-present-if-we-truly-seek-to-dismantle-white-supremacy

I'VE SNAPPED MY BANJO STRING, LET'S JUST TALK // Scott Agnew

Before he gets going, Scott Agnew checks that everyone in the room knows what he really means when he talks about snapping a banjo string. Because anyone who thinks they're in for an hour of innocuous anecdotes from a homespun folk player might be in for a shock. The incident during which – to use the medical term – the frenulum beneath the foreskin of his penis tore and “showered the walls with blood” is one of the more viscous but by no means most explicit of stories in this brief survey of the activities that might have led to him contracting HIV. Cantering from sauna to nightclub to drug-fuelled house parties, he admits that sometimes he wasn't in total control of his actions.

Long before his HIV diagnosis, Agnew needed another for his mental health, but the GP he saw wrote him off successively as an alcoholic, a food addict, a gambler, a sex addict and more, without recognising the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Agnew now manages both conditions, but there's an equivocal tone in his text that suggests he's still overwhelmed by this. For instance, he makes a specific point of saying that not understanding his mental health doesn't absolve his responsibility for his virus, as though HIV is a shameful thing. The words that repeat as a refrain in his show are: “It's not ideal – a downbeat phrase in search of a bright side.

Yet he does recognise positive aspects to his HIV diagnosis: for instance, he jokes, his medication has raised his life expectancy above the average for Glasgow, his home. And with the virus now undetectable in his blood count, he's a safer date than most – although, he points out lugubriously, “that's a hard sell on the dancefloor”. His politicking is bolder when directed outside himself: why is it, he asks, that gays on the telly have to be sexually neutered to be acceptable for a mainstream audience? Camp is fine, he argues, but there needs to be a wider spectrum of queer personality in public life. Elsewhere he gets exercised by the widespread use of date-rape drugs among gay men, who have been “hiding for so long” that they have no way of expressing their emotions. Undoubtedly the two are connected.

For all the comedic banter, it's a poignant show, one that raises a number of questions about Agnew's relationship with his diagnoses and with his Catholic family. Within those questions is a sharp impression of of how far the LGBT+ community still needs to travel towards visibility and feeling accepted within society at large. (MC)

Scott Agnew: I've Snapped My Banjo String, Let's Just Talk is at 22.00 at Gilded Balloon at the Counting House until 29 August. See venue for accessibility information - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/scott-agnew-i-ve-snapped-my-banjo-string-let-s-just-talk

On living with frenulum breve: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/feb/28/healthandwellbeing.health2

On HIV stigma and homophobia: http://www.thebody.com/content/art54913.html

A look at the language of HIV stigma: http://www.thebody.com/content/75496/when-words-work-against-us-the-language-of-hiv-sti.html

Information on bipolar disorder: http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/bipolar-disorder/

THE TALK // Mish Grigor

It's a basic fact of parenting that children grow up to do things you might personally find regrettable: contract sexual diseases, for instance, or make theatre, or worse, make theatre about contracting sexual diseases. Mish Grigor's parents have approved a version of her text for The Talk but not, she twinkles, this one. And whether or not that or anything else she says in the show is true is irrelevant; she transcends old-fashioned morals and conventional proprieties the moment she describes the size of her father's cock in a reported conversation with her mother, and just keeps travelling from there.

At the heart of The Talk is a frustration: that every one of us is alive because two people had sex, and yet culturally we're terrible at talking about it. Grigor plunges her family into discomfort when she starts interrogating them about how they fuck: no one can understand why she's doing it, but that incomprehension is part of the point. The prim silence we observe around sex allows all manner of inequalities to persist: not least, the one demonstrated within Grigor's own family, whereby her father is cheerfully being sucked off by a third wife, while her mother is single, wary of online dating, and contemplating a future in which perhaps she never has sex again.

Lack of communication also breeds misinformation and fear: the fear that Grigor confesses feeling not only for but of her brother, now living with HIV. It's left to him to explain, patiently, that modern medication makes the virus undetectable in his blood stream. No one knows what effect it will have on the body long-term, he adds, but even if it kills me, at least it will stop me killing anyone else.

In this, and throughout the show, the words of Grigor's family are spoken by members of the audience: she takes our presence in the room as consent, and in doing so glances at another critical problem caused by lack of decent conversation about sex. The show relies on general embarrassment for its humour: if everyone in the room were comfortable rather than coy in talking about their bodies and its pleasures, The Talk would lose much of its piquancy. But society as a whole might gain, Grigor argues: especially the people within it who aren't heterosexual cis-men. (MC)

The Talk is on at 16.00 at Forest Fringe (Out of the Blue Drill Hall) unitl August 20th. See venue for accessibility information - http://forestfringe.co.uk/edinburgh2016/artist/mish-grigor/

Another argument for more and better talking about sex, in the Wardrobe Ensemble show 1972: The Future of Sex: http://www.thewardrobeensemble.com/#!1972-the-future-of-sex/c13ut

On Paul Goodman, whose 1960 book Growing Up Absurd argued that the fettering of adolescent sexuality was crucial to subduing the human spirit within a capitalist system: http://www.paulgoodmanfilm.com/old/the_relevance.html

Writing on consent from the Edinburgh fringe: https://katewyver.wordpress.com/2016/08/08/zero-something-important/

On the 3D model of a clitoris, to be used in French sex education: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/15/french-schools-3d-model-clitoris-sex-education

On HIV treatment: http://www.tht.org.uk/myhiv/HIV-and-you/Your-treatment/HIV-treatment