JUST A FEW WORDS Nye Russell-Thompson

Set in the basement bar of a stylish restaurant, this performance space is intimate and inviting. Otis Redding sings softly from the turntable on stage, sometimes getting stuck on and repeating the word 'I'. The disc is left spinning after the song has ended, providing a soundtrack for the performance; a soft, repetitive, regular sound of a needle resting on circling vinyl.

Nye Russell-Thompson enters the stage with a huge pile of large cards which he puts down, then begins to try to speak to us,  except his word seems to be 'stuck'. His persistent, repetitive efforts to push this word out, again and again, don't succeed. Ruseell-Thompson stops attempting to speak and turns to the cards, holding up the first one, on which is written a word in large black marker pen. The cards become his 'other' voice, his internal voice, often witty and like-able, which he shares with us, the audience.  He invites us to help him articulate the word he is struggling with, and we join him, fleetingly and momentarily in his struggle to speak, with an un-co-operative mouth. His invitation to experience the physical processes involved in stammering, is a confident act, in contrast to the inner voices that later insult and strip him bare of his ability to hold on to his integrity. We see the words on the cards spiral into a self-attacking, demoralising stripping away of dignity and self-confidence, having increasing effect on the confidence and self-esteem of this young man standing before us in a sea of words at his feet.

This performance offers an opportunity for reflection on the disruptions of social structures and we are faced with the question of how we might personally respond to situations when more time is required than we might be 'familiar' with for activities that many of us take for granted. A card reading ‘DOESN’T MATTER’ quietly, but devastatingly, demonstrates what happens when someone’s voice takes longer or sounds different from the norm: they can feel disempowered in their own voice, convinced that the content of their (perhaps slow) conversation doesn’t matter. Who takes responsibility and who allows for the structures around communication to be altered? In parallel with Sue MacLaine and Selma Nadarajah’s Can I Start Again Please, and Lost Voice Guy’s Disability for Dunces, issues of being heard and being silenced, being allowed a voice, are powerfully addressed. There is less need to coax voices from those who are mostly-silent (they are already out there, and they are powerful), and more of a need to teach everyone to listen better. (CL)

JUST A FEW WORDS, Nye Russell-Thompson, 8-29 August (Except Wednesdays)Clouds and Soil - Compass Room (Venue 71). Unfortunately the venue is not wheelchair accessible. Performance space is down a flight of aprox 20 stairs with a rail on the right hand side (descending) http://freefringe.org.uk/edinburgh-fringe-festival/just-a-few-words/2015-08-15/

More about the show from the British Stammering Association: http://www.stammering.org/speaking-out/article/just-few-words

About Can I Start Again Please?: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/can-i-start-again-please

About Lost Voice Guy: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/lost-voice-guy-disability-for-dunces

EVERYTHING THAT’S WRONG WITH THE UNIVERSE Gemma Arrowsmith

Arrowsmith’s sketch comedy show hits a number of targets - body and behaviour policing, the rise of homeopathy, beauty pageants, homophobia and natural disasters – but is particularly effective at highlighting the misogyny, hypocrisy and confusion involved in health messaging, and its effects on women.  The unending cycle Arrowsmith describes is not necessarily new, but definitely unfamiliar territory in the world of comedy: she talks about how media and marketing create a particular problem – a body part which doesn’t look right , for example – creates a marketable solution – a new product to solve this previously unproblematic problem – and then shames people into consuming. Once consumers, the cycle can start all over again, with new undiscovered problems, and new products to cure them. Unrelenting in her cynicism, Arrowsmith is focused in her critique and puts her characters in situations which, as happens with many consumers, it is nearly impossible to escape from. Everything That’s Wrong with the Universe promotes a more informed consumer, and a more questioning health advocate. (BL) 

EVERYTHING THAT’S WRONG WITH THE UNIVERSE, Gemma Arrowsmith, 5-31 August, Underbelly Med Quad. Venue is wheelchair accessible. Contact venue for other access questions. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/everything-that-s-wrong-with-the-universe

More on Gemma Arrowsmith: http://gemmaarrowsmith.com/

On Women and Vitamin-Shaming: http://www.elle.com/beauty/health-fitness/news/a16962/multi-vitamins-dont-work/

On Homeopathy and the NHS: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/feb/25/homeopathy-nhs-costs-parliament

GARDEN Lucy Grace

Anxiety and specific mental health issues remain in the backdrop of this solo meditation about the effects of contemporary society on the human body. Lucy is an office worker at the soulless Insignia Assessment Management who, after a seemingly-innocent decision to take on the role of the company Green Officer, awakens to more natural rhythms of the world, and the deeply uncomfortable reality of office and urban life. There are a number of films and theatre shows that have dealt with this territory, particularly Todd Haynes’ film SAFE (which will have a visual art exhibition dedicated to its themes at HOME Manchester in November), and Grace’s addition to the discourse is both charming and alarming.   Abigail Conway’s new work An Evening with Primrose - which presents an audience with the blooming of a single bud of primrose – also asks an audience what is missed when we live exclusively on company time. There are no simple solutions, and Grace’s GARDEN presents an ambivalent and open-ended ending – it is not as simple as throwing it all away and starting again, but it also might be. (BL) 

GARDEN, Lucy Grace, 7-31 August. Pleasance Below. Please contact venue for accessibility: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/garden

More on Lucy Grace: http://www.thepublicreviews.com/five-fast-fringe-questions-with-lucy-grace-from-garden/

On caring for a Dracaena: http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/houseplants/dracaena/dracaena-houseplant-care.htm

On SAFE Exhibition at HOME Manchester: http://homemcr.org/exhibition/safe/

On Abigail Conway’s Evening with Primrose: http://abigailconway.org.uk/An-evening-with-Primrose

On Pigeons: http://www.pigeoncontrolresourcecentre.org/html/the-pigeon-in-history.html

THE TEMPTATION OF ST ANTHONY The Mechanical Animal Corporation

The old veterinary college setting of The Temptation of St Anthony creates an atmosphere of 'ritual' with a formality yet a sense of something 'out of the ordinary' from the outset. This devised performance responds to the legend of St Anthony, a man who went into the Egyptian desert 1700 years ago and experienced 'spirit possession' throughout his life.

We meet and get to know something of the very individual and idiosyncratic performers as each of the five actors enter, three of them wearing torn and burnt clothing. There is chaos and calm, powerful vocal sounds along with stones, healing bowls and drums, starkly contrasted at times with discord, hysteria and wailing.the acoustics of the building are highly beneficial for this piece and the musical talents of this group of people.

The research for the show (supported by The Wellcome Trust, amongst others) was influenced by case studies but these were not dramatized, instead the performers illustrate narrative aspects of possession, created by imaginative engagement in the experience of possession based on their research findings.  These elements of narrative are an articulate illustration of the way in which possession and/or psychiatrically diagnosed conditions, are hugely complex, multi-layered and difficult to describe (Put something in about Petra's work here?) The ensemble comprises performers from Egypt, New Zealand, The UK, Sweden and Japan; which provides a rich cultural representation and contribution of differing voices which have the capacity for harmony as well as each retaining their very distinct individuality. The theme of possession was researched from psychiatric, anthropological and religious angles, with the input from experts in each field. 

The printed programme accompanying the show provides a detailed and thorough description of the research process, which attends to the delicate nature of the subject matter and its need for respect and care. For someone who does not read the programme, questions may be raised about the potential problems involved in portraying people with mental health issues, and the appropriateness of this in performance (or not). This show refers to the form of spirit possession that in many cultures is regarded as a form of mental illness, rather than it being a possible mode of healing. It refers to the various cultural stereotypes associated with it, such as labels like 'insane' 'deranged' 'mad' and 'hysterical' This conflict of how possession is perceived and 'treated' within different cultures, underpins the show, with questions being raised about it being 'indefinable' and the spiritual aspect not being regarded as something treatable by psychiatrists, only the medical aspect is diagnosable and treatable. (CL)

THE TEMPTATION OF ST ANTHONY, The Mechanical Animal Corporation, 13-30 August. Summerhall Demonstration Room. This venue is not wheelchair accessible, other accessibility may be available, please check with venue. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/temptation-of-st-anthony

More about The Mechanical Animal Corporation, one of our Partners in Sickness and Health: http://thesickofthefringe.com/partners/mechanimal

On exorcisms and psychology: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jul/09/pope-francis-psychology-exorcism-possession

Links provided by The Mechanical Animal Corporation.

Spiritual Crisis Network: http://spiritualcrisisnetwork.uk/

Royal College of Psychiatrists: http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthinformation/therapies/spiritualityandmentalhealth.aspx

ABACUS Early Morning Opera

This TED-talk inspired performance finds Paul Abacus, a white, American male 'presenting' to the audience, accompanied by two Stedicam camera operators, with a huge screen as backdrop. The content of the presentation is informed by the work of 20th century inventor and visionary, R. Buckminster Fuller, who worked as a 'comprehensive anticipatory design scientist' to solve global problems, towards the creation of a sustainable planet.

A performance is an unsettlingly polished journey through a researched set of statistics of how things have changed in relation to the planet and population over the past 250 years, with highly produced visuals on screen illustrating the facts and figures enthusiastically being fed to us covering a broad range of topics: from organic gardening, to attendance in Catholic schools, to who owns how many shares of the moon and the north pole. We are told that screens are the new religion and asked questions about the implications of that; how does our screen obsession affect our future as a human race? We as audience are included in the potential consequences of what is taking place on a global and Universal level, and forced to take responsibility for our part in what is happening. 'Do we want another dark age', Abacus asks, because apparently we could be heading towards one.

Abacus confronts us, and includes us in his existential questioning about life and freedom, believing that the planet is approaching a seismic shift. The images on the screen change constantly, alternating between the polished graphics and live feeds coming from the Steadicams, which Abacus speaks directly to, so his projection is both addressing the audience and then he switches into directly talking to us, so we see him from all angles, both virtually and in the flesh. As the outcome of the research is delivered continually in this manner, the pace of the presentation builds to what is either a crescendo or a rollercoaster ride, and we are given the option to climb aboard and scream with Abacus. This is the age of the screen. And we are left wondering what the implications of all the Age of the Screen on national borders, immigration crises, natural disasters, governments, and the way are bodies are, or are not, prepared to deal with this age. There will be something post-Screen, certainly, but this remains uncertain. And just as we never know the irony or genuineness of Abacus’ presentation, as audience members we embody that uncertainty – wowed by the speed and the graphics and the movement and also questioning their reality. (CL)

ABACUS, Early Morning Opera, 7-30 August (various dates). Summerhall. Please contact venue for accessibility. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/abacus

More from Early Morning Opera: earlymorningopera.com

On R. Buckminster Fuller: https://bfi.org/about-fuller

TED Talk by Nicholas Negroponte on The Future: http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_negroponte_a_30_year_history_of_the_future?language=en

CAN I START AGAIN PLEASE? Sue MacLaine and Nadia Nadarajah

This rigourous and challenging hour examines both the very literal and very philosophical implications of translation and interpretation. Two performers, Sue MacLaine and Nadia Nadarajah tell parallel narratives in two parallel languages (spoken English and BSL) which intersect, diverge and build on each other to make a whole greater than its parts. Can I Start Again Please? uses reflections of listening and speaking (initially presumed to be about hearing and deaf communication, but quickly spinning out to be about much more) to look critically at why and how one remains silent after trauma and, specifically, sexual abuse.  How can one speak about the unspeakable? And why would one speak if they know that others will not hear? While lesser works have used physical difference as the stuff of metaphor, MacLaine and Nadarajah’s relationship is textured and rich, providing a visual and aural landscape of communication to consider.

The speed of the work is steady, without gigantic leaps or crescendos, and the using of Wittgenstein’s philosophy as both pacing device and philosophical framework forces the audience to re-engage over and over again with how their brain works, and consciously consider how they are taking in the performance and the text. In this way, Can I Start Again Please intervenes into discourse around sexual assault and trauma, forcing audiences to think about how they receive the stories which are around us all the time yet still swept under carpets, or withheld until victims/survivors feel able to say anything (which is inevitably beyond the time that our inequitable world believes is the appropriate/acceptable). The work’s stately simplicity is an act of non-apology – there will be no appeals to your sympathy, but an appeal to make you hear, and understand.

CAN I START AGAIN PLEASE? Sue MacLaine and Nadia Nadarajah, 7-30 August, Summerhall. Venue is not wheelchair accessible. The performance is variously BSL interpreted, audio described and relaxed performance is available. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/can-i-start-again-please

More on Sue MacLaine’s work: http://www.suemaclaine.com/

Wittgensteins’ Tractatus: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-pdf.pdf

CELL Smoking Apples and Dogfish

This puppetry and physical theatre piece looks at the life of Ted, a man with Motor Neuron Disease, who begins to come to terms with life in a changed body. Just as Romina Puma discusses in Not Disabled…Enough, there is a great tension between medical models of understanding disability and social models, and neither of which are fully comfortable as homes for people with degenerative chronic conditions. Ted’s story embraces the See the Person, Not the Disability kind of campaign which encourages people to look beyond disability to see ashared humanity. Such a campaign or narrative, however, is not universally embraced, with disability activists saying that one must embrace the whole in order to make people feel fully human and empowered as members of society. What is wrong with seeing the wheelchair? What is wrong with a change in health? Of course debilitating, currently-uncurable illnesses must be researched and supported, medically, with the same vigorousness as society treats things like cancer, but they must also be charted as something which happens to the body which has implications on health care, social services and accessibility. 

Puppets and puppetry have often been used as metaphors for individuals or societies being controlled, and such a metaphor is uncomfortable when used with a body which transitions between nondisabled and disabled. The body being carried around and cared for – while also being silent – does not seemingly project the most empowered of stances. But would a performer without MND do justice to the work? Such controversies swirled with the casting of Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything, and the inclusion of more disabled performers in both disabled and non-disabled roles is a conversation happening throughout the UK. Disability activists are fighting for greater representation in their stories not only because they want empowered stories to be told, but because they want the political implications of these works to be fully realised: when one creates a character with Motor Neuron Disease and asks an audience (who will have their own relationship with MND, illness and disability)  to engage in their story, one must also fight against the cuts to the Independent Living Fund and the Access to Work scheme, one must demand not only medical research but social equality, and one must engage with a politics which embraces humanity, regardless of, but not ignoring of, disability.

CELL, Smoking Apples & Dogfish, 7-30 August, Underbelly Cowgate. Venue is not wheelchair accessible, hearing loop available. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/cell

More on Smoking Apples: http://smokingapplestheatre.com/

More on Dogfish: http://www.dogfishtheatre.com/

On Romina Puma: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/not-disabled-enough

On Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything and Disability: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/01/20/the_theory_of_everything_and_disability_why_eddie_redmayne_shouldn_t_get.html

A Response to “See the Body, Not the Disability”: http://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/the-problem-with-person-first-language/

Touretteshero and changes to Access to Work scheme: http://www.touretteshero.com/2015/01/24/access-to-tears/

MY BEAUTIFUL BLACK DOG Brigitte Aphrodite

My Beautiful Black Dog is a rock gig: it is hardcore, it is loud, it is messy, it is an incredibly meaningful meditation on mental health and how we talk about it, don’t talk about it, and carry it with us at all time. While Winston Churchill famously described his depression as a black dog that followed him everywhere he went, Aphrodite calls her dog Crescendorious, explicitly mixing the worlds of music (and its inevitable crescendo) and the gloriousness of a life honestly lived. Aphrodite’s performance is a mental health survival tale without a clear, start to finish narrative, and without ever calling herself a survivor: the piece is most successful when it recognises the form it might be shoe-horned into, and rejecting it: My Beautiful Black Dog is not an inspirational tale of someone being diagnosed with a mental illness and then coming out better in the end. The start of the piece (and her illness) is quite usefully ambiguous, very few illnesses have a single trigger, or a definitive starting point – and here it seems as though one day the anxiety she had been feeling for a while becomes overwhelming. Aphrodite describes this as a creeping sensation, not unlike Black (Le Gateau Chocolat, diagnosed below) whose work, at the end, finds the audience understanding that mental illness is not discreet, or neat, or over even when one thinks its over. It’s a process, and can be a very long and arduous one. 

The form of the music gig makes My Beautiful Black Dog accessible, emotional and enjoyable to watch, but also allows her to play with music and musicality in meaningful ways. Co-performer Quiet Boy’s strange microphone addition makes music sound distant and strange – a metaphor for the disconnect between reality and a reality lived inside depression – and the flight case (normally used for transporting amps and other equipment) provides a provocative and problematic sanctuary for Aphrodite in her lowest of times. As she plays a large number of voice messages from concerned friends and family, the flight case becomes a hiding place, a bank vault, a grave, in quick succession, making her silence even more profoundly felt. 

My Beautiful Black Dog excitingly talks honestly about the connection, or the relationship between mental health and drugs and alcohol without being alarmist and judgemental. For Aphrodite, alcohol exasperated her anxiety, and was overall quite dangerous, but she doesn’t seem to make a blanket critique of all drug or alcohol culture. Such a thoughtful approach feels similar to the venues such as Let’s Talk About Gay Sex & Drugs, which support empowering conversation with gay men in London talking about health, drugs, sex and mental health.  Aphrodite’s work also expressly links the physical activity of the body with mental health, creating a performance that is incredibly physically taxing and resonant with how the body and mind are deeply intertwined. The show is sweaty for her and her co-performer Quiet Boy, but she thankfully passes us glitter to make ourselves a mess as well. Wearing glitter for the rest of the day was a perfect physical reminder of the reflection on mental health – it’s both annoying (now one has this glitter on them that is hard to get off) and inspiring, knowing that life might be messy and unpredictable, but in and amongst all the drama, one can shine. (BL)

MY BEAUTIFUL BLACK DOG, Brigitte Aphrodite, 7-16 August, Underbelly Cowgate. This venue is not wheelchair accessible.

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/my-beautiful-black-dog

More about Brigitte Aphrodite:

brigitteaphrodite.co.uk

On Winston Churchill’s Black Dog:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/good-to-share/10568933/How-to-deal-with-the-black-dog-of-depression.html

On Let’s Talk About Gay Sex and Drugs:

http://attitude.co.uk/lets-talk-gay-sex-drugs/

Le Gateau Chocolat:

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/le-gateau-chocolat-black

FUNNY AS CANCER Beth Vyse

Funny As Cancer is a stand-up/storytelling performance which charts Beth Vyse’s adventurous and eccentric life as an up-and-coming actor which takes a strange and unpleasant turn as she deals with breast cancer at the age of 28. Vyse demonstrates the absurdities of diagnosis and surgery, particularly focusing on the inability for families and loved ones to talk about cancer and illness, and the pressure it puts on romantic relationships. Vyse’s work shares commonalities with many stories about cancer – discussed by Jackie Stacey in Teratologies – which change irrevocably and quickly after a diagnosis: life was normal and exciting and funny and then…. Cancer.  Such a trajectory feels quite similar to films like 50/50 or Terms of Endearment, which is meant not as a criticism, but as, perhaps, a moment in which the biology of the illness affects the form of the story. For people with cancer, the word, the diagnosis changes ones perspective in a moment, pulls all focus, and can become quite overwhelming.

Vyse pulls audience members in as participants in her story, forcing people to enact sex, sperm banks, egg deposits, and more. While audience members might flinch at such participation, this mode of storytelling forces us to engage not as passive audience members, but as people who are part of the community which is sharing this story. Because cancer is as much defined by the biology as by the cultural stigma and misconceptions around it, asking us to participate in telling her story lets us think about how we would think about the situation, what we might say to our boyfriend/girlfriend or daughter, or mother etc. In this way, Vyse’s story asks us to shake off the notion that cancer is only experienced by a singular body at a time – it is all about relationships and how we can talk about these issues more, and better. (BL)

FUNNY AS CANCER, Beth Vyse, Heroes @ The Hive, 7-30 August. This venue is not currently accessible for wheelchairs, but may have an accessible option. Please contact the venue.

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/beth-vyse-as-funny-as-cancer

More about Beth Vyse:

http://www.bethvyse.com/www.bethvyse.com/Welcome.html

Jackie Stacey’s Teratologies

https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/the-unspeakable-spectre-of-big-c/105435.article

Stupid Cancer and Fertility

http://stupidcancer.org/support/fertility.shtml

Everything Changes, Kairol Rosenthal

http://everythingchangesbook.com/

GOODSTOCK Lost Watch

To know or not to know is the question that happens well before Goodstock begins: Olivia Hirst does know, and she knows that she tested positive for BRCA1, the gene which predisposes a person to breast and ovarian cancer. Lost Watch’s play, set to a live soundtrack, mines the ethics of genetic testing, and particularly the financial, emotional, sexual and (of course) surgical implications for young women. While such surgical and physical effects have been increasingly understood (in part due to people like Angelina Jolie and her highly-publicised double mastectomy) questions of guilt (and anger and ambivalence) linked to hereditary conditions is freshly considered.  

Probably the most significant contribution of Goodstock’s writing is the introduction of the term “Cancer Avoider” to the lexicon of cancer understanding. While so so so much energy is foisted upon those who survive, and so so so many memorials are laid out for those who die due to the disease, there is little space in current cancer discourse for those who don’t fit neatly into these two categories. As Hirst so rightly points out, after her mastectomy she will have the battle scars from cancer, but no battle. This is not at all a personal failing on Hirst’s and more of a failing of the current cancer world to think beyond survival/death and to think beyond simple, fundraise/marketing friendly language. As previous diagnoses will mention, the biggest problem here is that cancer is still far disconnected from disability discourses, which would positively add a dimension of understanding health/well-being and bodies as inherently growing, shifting, working, not working, etc, over time. As S. Lachlann Jain writes about in “Living in Prognosis” the entirety of the world and its understanding of time, pressure, and embodiment changes with a cancer diagnosis, and Hirst’s writing adds a new dimension to this body of social research. 

The work also usefully throws up the different generational struggles to understand science. While Hirst’s grandmother feels guilty about the passing on of the BRCA1 gene, how could she have ever known? And would knowing that she carries the BRCA1 gene prevent Hirst from having a child if she so desires? This intergenerational cast deals thoughtfully with these questions, reminiscent of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, which looks at sexuality and how it is understood generationally – when these different generations necessarily speak to each other about these questions, there may be both unique fights and unique moments of understanding and reflection.

GOOD STOCK, Lost Watch, Pleasance Dome Attic, 7-31 August. This venue is not wheelchair accessible.https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/goodstock

More on Lost Watch: http://www.lostwatchtheatre.co.uk/goodstock/4588691819

Jonny Pelham (below) who also discusses surgery and necessity, but in different ways: http://www.chortle.co.uk/comics/j/33921/jonny_pelham

Breast Cancer Action: http://www.bcaction.org/

Angelina Jolie and BRCA1: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/angelina-jolie-ovaries-removed-what-is-the-brca1-gene-should-i-get-tested-and-does-it-mean-ill-get-cancer-10129378.html

S. Lachlann Jain and Living in Prognosis: http://www.malignant.us/essay_links_files/Living%20in%20Prognosis.pdf

On generational understandings in Fun Home: https://otherwomenswords.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/from-one-generation-to-another-oppression-in-and-of-fun-home/

ELECTRIC DREAMS Dumbshow

Politically inspired by Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, Dumbshow’s quite epic one hour play, performed by live accompaniment, covers a vast spectrum of issues related to mental health, psychiatry, torture, political strife and the importance of staying strong against oppression. The piece’s humble beginnings – in which now-redundant librarians break into their now-shuttered library to fetch seemingly innocuous, or even nostalgic, items left by an elderly woman – rapidly descends into a far-reaching look at how governments use fear to control populations. The ethics of psychiatric practice are looked at in depth, and reminiscent of shades of Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, but here are more politically inflected. While the central character of Rose had, in fact, pursued psychiatric help (in the 1950s), the power of her psychiatrist to control and ruin her life in the name of research feel reminiscent of Mengele’s experiments at Auschwitz, or the horrifying syphilis experiments at Tuskegee. While we hope such experiments don’t exist anymore – particularly with excesses of ethics forms necessary for all human- and animal-based research, Electric Dreams highlights a still prevalent, and mostly-unquestioning attitude towards science and towards government. Do we still think that we will do anything for scientific, political or economic growth? What are the costs to our health, both physical and emotional? Both central characters initially live a life in which they are unable to remember their past, mostly for their own good, but grow into a space and place where they can incorporate these past horrors into both their lives and their activism in unique and inspiring ways. Ultimately, Electric Dreams is both a warning and a call to action, raising its flag high for a population which is anti-austerity, anti-torture, and empowered in their activism, as well as being a show which fiercely lambasts scientists who have ever used behavioural research to torture or otherwise harm, and the political leaders who would employ scientific research to learn about such things. 

ELECTRIC DREAMS, Dumbshow, 7-30 August, Jack Dome, Pleasance Dome. Please check venue for accessibility.https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on#q=%22Electric%20Dreams%22

More about Dumbshow:http://www.dumbshow.org/

About KUBARK (CIA manual regarding torture): http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/

Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine: http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine

On Dr. Cameron and torture psychology: http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2012/09/mk-ultraviolence/

At the end of a show about torture and psychology, you may need some light relief:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE1lzqJCeJ0

TO SPACE Niamh Shaw

Dr Niamh Shaw’s To Space interweaves the informative with the personal in this performance lecture on the impossible enormity of space and one woman’s impossible(?) dream to see it for herself. In the apt setting of Summerhall’s Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Shaw positions us in the known universe, upon a blue speck in the void, and within the history of astronomical discovery – our present moment. As she does, she tells the story of her dream of becoming an astronaut, from her first encounter with Han Solo at the age of eight, to her visit to the European Space Agency last year at the age of forty-five. 

To Space questions how the individual’s pursuit of the ‘elite dream’ - only 536 people have ever been to space – enables frontline scientific advancement. Shaw herself stumbles in her anecdotal narrative when considering the myriad risks of astronautics, and in doing so asks the question: how do we value the human in advancing humanity? This is highlighted most discomfortingly in Shaw’s discussion of the two embryonic plans to set up a colony on Mars: NASA/ESA’s, set for 2037 (waiting for technology to advance enough to bring colonisers back to Earth); and Mars-One, projected optimistically for 2025, in the knowledge that those sent will die on Mars.

Unlike NASA’s elite entry requirements, Mars-One accepted applications from 200,000 civilians from various backgrounds - Shaw is evidently not alone in being seduced by the promise of extraterrestrial travel. But the metaphor offered by her live whey protein and glycerol experiment remains problematic: is individual suffering (however consensual) in the name of ‘giant leaps’ more ethically complex than “making the useless useful”? (HM)

TO SPACE, Niamh Shaw, 11-17, 19-24, 26-30, Summerhall Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Wheelchair Access and Level Access. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/to-space

More about Dr Niamh Shaw: http://www.tospace2014.com/#!niamh-shaw/cfe5

Mars-One: http://www.mars-one.com

Chris Chambers in The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/11/mars-one-ethical-questions-bas-lansdorp

THE SCIENCE OF SEX Rosie Wilby

Wilby’s The Science of Sex mines its comedy from the seeming absurdity of analysing the intensely personal, emotional and erotic through a clinical, statistical, biomedical lens. Armed with the familiar labcoat-and-flipchart accoutrements, Wilby conducts tongue-in-cheek sex research with the audience. She invites someone to draw a line graph of their relationship’s happiness over time, produces a parody of the ball-and-stick molecule model to illustrate the separation of love and sex, and exhibits a pie chart featuring ‘people I might fancy’ slightly overlapping with ‘people who might fancy me.’

Amongst the jollity, however, Wilby includes actual examples from the canon of sexology; Havelock Ellis, Masters and Johnson, even elucidating the anthropological roots of syncing menses. Though we laugh at Wilby’s graphs, we unwittingly contribute to dialogues on how some fields seek to ‘quantify the unquantifiable’, to clinically observe and explain the functions that feel so removed from the absolute. How do we feel knowing that love, lust, and attachment have purely endocrinal explanations?

Wilby’s piece also raises questions about how we collate data about sex and relationships, offering us a bar chart featuring the average weekly frequency of sex for lesbians, straight men, straight women and gay men. In noting the absence of bisexuality in this 1980s data analysis, we might consider how contemporary sexology can accommodate a growing social movement towards the expansion, fluidity, or even obsolescence of labeled gender and sexuality, whilst it continues to rely on categorised and quantified data for validity. (HM/KB)

THE SCIENCE OF SEX, Rosie Wilby, Sneaky Pete’s, PBH Free Fringe, Aug 11-15, Level Access (one step at venue entrance).

More about Rosie Wilby http://www.rosiewilby.com

The Institute of Sexology, Wellcome Collection: http://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/institute-sexology

See also Lois Weaver’s public engagement/research work on sex and ageing, in her show What Tammy Needs to Know About Getting Old and Having Sex

BBC interview with Lois Weaver: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33278117

Telegraph on Facebook gender options: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10637968/Facebook-sex-changes-which-one-of-50-genders-are-you.html

PEER REVIEWED POETRY Dan Simpson and Dr. Sam Illingworth

‘Peer-Reviewed Poetry’ introduces, play-fights with, and eventually dismantles the idea that there is an insurmountable opposition between ‘perfect/cold’ science and ‘irrelevant/beautiful’ poetry. Co-opting the audience into this binary (we are invited to hold up two-sided flashcards to meaure our responses), Simpson the poet and Illingworth the physicist take turns reading excerpts from a lengthy canon of poetry - on science, and by scientists.

The extent of the tradition of renowned scientists doubling as poets is actually surprising for the uninitiated (Primo Levi a prime-o example, as well as poet/immunologist Miroslav Holub, but dating as far back as Erasmus Darwin’s paper in verse, The Botanic Garden), and invites us to consider how recent a development is the perceived division of science and art. Though we celebrate the celeb-science of Brian Cox, do we discourage real interweaving of empiricism and aestheticism in the individual?

An excellent recent example of the meeting of the minds of science and poetry is the Refracted Light anthology, edited by James Wilkes: twenty contemporary poets respond to Jackson Mac Low’s LIGHT POEMS – famously constructed through non-intentional compositional methods. (HM)

PEER REVIEWED POETRY, Dan Simpson and Dr. Sam Illingworth, Cowgatehead UpTwo(M), until Aug 9 (event passed). No Wheelchair or Level Access.

More on Dan Simpson: https://dansimpsonpoet.wordpress.com

More on Dr. Sam Illingworth: http://www.samillingworth.com

More on Refracted Light poetry anthology:http://sabotagereviews.com/2015/05/08/refracted-light-20-poets-respond-to-jackson-mac-lows-light-poems-ed-by-james-wilkes/

Siddhartha Mukherjee on Primo Levi in The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/dec/02/my-hero-primo-levi-siddhartha-mukherjee

BEFORE AND AFTER Jonny Pelham

Before & After photos are ubiquitous: we see them in advertisements for diet supplements, home improvements, anti-wrinkle cream. For Jonny Pelham, the Before & After are related to the major (and expensive) facial cosmetic surgery offered to him on the NHS. His discussion of how the NHS justified its expenditure because of possible psychological distress for his appearance (affected by a cleft palate and a number of facial surgeries as a child), is made more potent by his reflections on the cosmetic, as opposed to medical, goals of the surgery. In The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde famously recounts a similar surgical dilemma, discussing how breast reconstruction is one of the few surgeries that doctors recommend which serves no medical function aside from making others more comfortable. A similar energy is discussed in Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face, who recounts the horrific process of being subjected to years of painful and unsuccessful facial surgeries. Although Pelham’s interaction with surgeons and the NHS is overall very positive, these assumptions about appearance (and who the surgery will benefit) seem to be a still-deeply rooted issue inside of medical care, recognising a medicalised norm that we all must aspire to. While Before & After presumes a singular start and finish to the journey, it is exciting to think of Pelham’s journey as one which will move and grow and change over time, with new Afters to the current After, as well as new beginnings. 

JONNY PELHAM: BEFORE AND AFTER, 7-31 August, Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker). Venue is wheelchair accessible.

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/jonny-pelham-before-and-after

More about Jonny Pelham:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01n2whk

On Audre Lorde’s Cancer Jounrals:

http://www.thefeministwire.com/2014/02/breast-cancer-lessons-audre-lorde-taught/

On Lucy Grealy’s As Seen on TV

http://www.salon.com/2000/08/16/grealy_2/

LOVELY Laura Lexx

In Tig Notaro’s epic 2013 Live at Largo set, Notaro drew from a world of extensive pain (the death of her mother, a near-death experience with an infection, a diagnosis of breast cancer) to deliver one of the world’s most impactful sets in recent memory. Laura Lexx takes a different tack, finding comedy in the everyday, the cheery, the lovely. While audience members don’t demand comedians/performers go through hardships, there is an old adage which says that one needs to mine pain to get to real depths. Is this simple privilege speaking, or is there philosophical territory to explore about why we think people demand to see pain in order to empathise. 

Lexx looks at documentaries – particularly nature documentaries, and particularly about animal sexuality – as clearly containing metaphor for human behaviour, which of course they do, and it would be interesting to mine how animals do – or do not – look for drama in their own lives. If they can do without it, why can’t we? Her work on irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) interrupts this lovely, drama-free life, as many medical conditions do, and Lexx demonstrates that even a non-life-threatening condition can provide the drama which facilitates real comedy. (BL)

LAURA LEXX: LOVELY, 11-17, 19-30 August, Underbelly Med Quad. Venue is wheelchair accessible.

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/laura-lexx-lovely

On Laura Lexx:

http://lauralexx.blogspot.co.uk/

On Tig Notaro’s Cancer Set: 

http://jezebel.com/5932048/tig-notaro-performed-some-amazing-comedy-about-being-diagnosed-with-cancer-according-to-everyone

On Kazuko Hohki’s Incontinental 

http://exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/incontinental/

SICK GIRL Mel Moon

Mel Moon’s stand-up performance charts her journey being diagnosed with a chronic, and incredibly dangerous, rare endocrine illness, which forces Moon to consider life, and living with dignity with a chronic condition. Although the show received major media attention for its contribution to conversations about assisted suicide, Dignitas, EXIT etc, Moon is fervent in her apolitical stance - thankful that she didn’t choose to end her life while at her most fragile and painful, she seems to speak compassionately about euthanasia activists. Even then, though, the journey is significantly less about how the personal journey intersects with political controversies, and more about the development of a chronic condition, and its effects on family, life goals, and how one interacts with the outside world.  

Moon’s work demonstrates how desperately the world needs better understandings of a social model of disability which recognises the the body grows and changes over time, versus a medical model which demands the body always returns to a stable ‘normal’. The lack of language around disability/medical condition creates huge rifts amongst Moon’s relationships, a common effect of serious illness and major changes in health. Also potent in the work is the frustrating and difficult journey of diagnosis of a rare condition: while Moon praises her current doctor as a genius, months and months of unrecognised or under appreciated symptoms is all too common, particularly for young adults, people statistically unlikely to have serious conditions.

Jess Thom, as Touretteshero, talks extensively about how interdependence (with an onstage co-performer and offstage with support workers) is critical to a life which might be seen as independent. For Moon, drugs and her partner are constant companions, and it is exciting to see how initial resistance blossoms into a great understanding of a life which is more complicated and untraditional than perhaps one thought it would be.

SICK GIRL, Mel Moon, 10-30 August. Laughing Horse @ The Counting House. Venue is not wheelchair accessible.https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/event/494715-mel-moon-sick-girl/

More about Mel Moon: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/comedian-mel-moon-how-the-decision-not-to-end-my-own-life-became-an-edinburgh-show-10334223.html

*Liz Carr will be, as part of The Sick of the Fringe, delivering a keynote address entitled RATHER DEAD THAN DISABLED which will also be dealing with some similar themes*  

http://thesickofthefringe.com/people/liz-carr

On the medical vs. social model of disability: http://www.disability.ie/disability-ie-information-portal/site-sections/rights-legislation/185-society/538-social-and-medical-models-of-disability

Resources for those with rare diseases:

http://www.raredisease.org.uk/

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/512606/the-rare-disease-search-engine-that-outperforms-google/

More about Touretteshero: touretteshero.com

HOW TO BE FAT // Mathilda Gregory

Mathilda Gregory’s How to Be Fat mixes stand-up comedy, storytelling and self-experimentation to deliver a performance about fatness, body policing, how one feels about their body and how this grows, changes, move forward, moves backward and often contradicts itself. Gregory’s various months spent documenting her food intake and adherence to different fad diets, feels like Instagram running amok, and is reminiscent of early scientists conducting experiments on themselves – somewhere between Benjamin Franklin and Jekyll and Hyde. The many contradictions inside the work are not the result of inconsistent storytelling (very much not so) but rather because Gregory is responding to the world of the policed female body, and the institutional structures which demand certain kinds (and amounts) of consumption and blame anyone who doesn’t fit into a prescribed norm.  Gregory charts these conflicting messages inside herself and also lambasts the etiquette and judgements around size which make it impossible to talk about fatness, and bodies, in public with both people who identify as fat, and those who do not.

While Gregory’s story is a personal one – and she makes sure to only make claims on her own experience – the work is a political one, bringing to mind Carol Hanisch’s seminal ‘The Personal is Political’ which charts how individual experience and oppression demands collective action. By charting the micro-aggresions and inequity experienced by fat people from various sectors in society, it is clear that a more collective approach is needed to open up conversation. Mathilda Gregory is in good company with work on body shaming and body positivity, with other artists including Selina Thompson, Le Gateau Chocolat (currently at Assembly, diagnosis on Black below), Scottee, and Charlotte Cooper’s blog Obesity Timebomb.

HOW TO BE FAT Mathilda Gregory 7-31 August Zoo Southside. Wheelchair Access and Level Access. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on#q=%22How%20to%20Be%20Fat%22

More about Mathilda Gregory: https://mathildia.wordpress.com/

‘The Personal is Political’ http://www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PIP.html

Scottee’s Short Film FAT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8nS5HpZirE

Ten Strange Self-Experiments: http://www.madsciencemuseum.com/msm/gallery/top_10_strangest_self_experiments

Obesity Timebomb Blog: http://obesitytimebomb.blogspot.co.uk/

OBLIVIOUS // Jamie MacDonald

Jamie MacDonald charts his experience with being oblivious to many things around him. Although his blindness keeps him physically unaware of much of his surrounding, the obliviousness he actually charts in his stand-up comedy reflects on much more, considering his experiences through childhood, trying to impress his fiancé, and trying to deal with the world’s ever-growing acceptance and accessibility to disabled people. MacDonald charts the downside of a post-paralympic interest and public engagement with disability – talked about extensively by artists like Katherine Araniello and DAG (Disabled Avant-Garde) – which promotes inclusion at all costs, and often presses disabled people to provide inspiration for others. While MacDonald speaks about the burdens of accessibility with a cheeky grin, the expectations of sameness and a ‘nondisabled washing’ points to things that may be lost as everyone becomes expected to achieve the same things. While we know that the world of his childhood – in which he was humiliated for his disability by students and patronised by teachers – was not an ideal environment for feeling empowered as a young man, the world he shows as existing today (exemplified by a young child feeling free to annoy him with all sorts of questions about his blindness) may still have some great inequalities and annoyances. (BL) 

JAMIE MACDONALD: OBLIVIOUS Jamie MacDonald, Assembly George Square, 7-30 August. Venue is wheelchair accessible.

More on Jamie MacDonald: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/jamie-macdonald-oblivious

Acoustic Shooting (Described by MacDonald in Oblivion): http://www.disabledshooting.org.uk/getting-started/introduction-to-shooting-disciplines/acoustic-shooting.html

Katherine Araniello: http://www.araniello-art.com/

Further reading: http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/national-paralympic-day-artists-dismiss-talk-of-2012-legacy/

MAGIKO // Siegfried Tieber & Dog House Theatricals

This close-up magic show is spectacular without containing any spectacle, with Siegfried Tieber’s storytelling engaging an audience in not only the individual tricks, but in our society’s broader understanding of mystery, illusion, and what it means to live with curiosity. Tieber’s mindreading and sleight of hand tricks challenge our confidence – if we see something, it must be real, mustn’t it? Similar to Complicite’s The Encounter (currently part of the Edinburgh International Festival, which cleverly reveals the mechanism in the binaural sound design), Magiko seemingly shows how the trick is made and then quickly, and astoundingly, expands the magic into a place where your mind wasn’t looking. These tricks of perception which have been used for ages by magicians and illusionists, are increasingly relevant to science, and scientific research work on phantom limbs, synaesthesia, neurological disorders, etc. While many successful magicians, such as Penn & Teller (who have engaged with the neuroscience behind their work) use illusions to wow their audiences, Tieber uses the set up to the illusion, as well as the denouement, to make us reconsider why we want to know how it works. Turning scientific and rational inquiry on its head, Tieber encourages us to live in a world that is not fully understood, and seek mystery and magic in our own lives.

MAGIKO, Siegfried Tieber & Dog House Theatricals, 9-31 August, Spotlites

This venue is not accessible for wheelchair users. Please contact venue for other accessibility requirements. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/magiko

Complicite’s The Encounter: http://www.eif.co.uk/2015/encounter#.VccpwlxVikp

Penn & Teller on Magic & The Brain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZg1KDEMzjo

On phantom limbs and perception: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15938103

 Vincent Gambini (another great close-up magician): http://www.vincentgambini.com/the-show.html