FINDERS KEEPERS // Hot Coals Theatre

Finders Keepers is a devised play using mime-based physical performance and puppetry to convey the story of a motherless girl who lives with her dad, and one day finds an abandoned baby that the pair care for together until its real mother returns to claim it. The production is loosely based on the story of Moses, and the final moments show the child's foster mother leaving home, perhaps to follow and become the baby's nanny.  

Within the story material, described by the company as 'a live cartoon', the show hints at issues around care and loss without explicitly interrogating them (we see moments: the ritual of kissing an absent mother's portrait, different situations involving saying goodbye to a child, the adoption of a stranger to the family).

Finders Keepers is is billed as 'accessible to deaf and hearing audiences in a shared experience', and isperformed by two women, one of whom hears, one who is partially deaf. It has been directed by Caroline Parker MBE, who grew up deaf in a hearing household, and we we are shown a world where significant sounds happen as part of the storytelling. The feature that distinguishes deaf audiences from Deaf ones is that they identify themselves as belonging within a majority hearing culture.

There are utterances whose meaning is not always reflected in visual portrayal; trumpet playing and headphones used as devices to soothe the baby; plot shifts in the story marked with pre-recorded soundtrack noises - most prominently the infant's cries, which the characters repeatedly hear and respond to.

During the periods of the show where the baby is crying, a string of lanterns above the set flicker. An extra layer of semiotic interpretation can translate that visual signifier to the understood fiction of a distressed child, by watching the ensuing responses of the cast onstage and extrapolating through repetition, or through familiarity with flashing and/or vibrating baby monitors for parents with hearing impairment.

Whilst we may all share the same theatrical environment, deaf, Deaf or Hearing audience members will receive differently nuanced versions of the story, as with lived experience.

- KK

Finders Keepers is on at 11:45 at ZOO until August 27th. Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/finders-keepers

On making theatre for D/deaf and hearing audiences: https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/2015/may/12/staging-theatre-deaf-hearing-audiences

On the differences between being deaf and Deaf: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/opinion/d_or_d_whos_deaf_and_whos_deaf.shtml

Resource of information for Deaf parents and professionals working with Deaf parents: http://www.deafparent.org.uk

Organisation dedicated to enriching the experience of CODAs (Children of Deaf Adults): http://www.coda-international.org

Collection of lectures on affectional bonds: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Y1ifjsdRGjsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Making+and+Breaking+of+Affectional+Bonds&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiemKj7rr_OAhUmLMAKHWUYCSMQ6AEIJDAB#v=onepage&q=The%20Making%20and%20Breaking%20of%20Affectional%20Bonds&f=false

WHEN I FEEL LIKE CRAP I GOOGLE KIM KARDASHIAN FAT // Mighty Heart

Amid the photographs and frocks on display in the Imperial War Museum's exhibition Fashion on the Ration (in London last year, now in Manchester) was an unsettling panel equating the wearing of make-up with national morale. Women in the 1940s, it suggested, were encouraged, obliged even, to look their best at all times, regardless of shortages, fatigue, anxiety or bombs; to keep their hair neat, their lipstick bright, and present a trim figure that told the men fighting: we believe you're winning.

The two elderly women whose voices are heard in Mighty Heart Theatre's When I Feel Like Crap I Google Kim Kardashian Fat speak of the past with a glow, as a time when women felt less media and social pressure to conform to a particular look or body image. Whatever they did have to contend with, they didn't have Photoshop or Instagram, or an unregulated diet industry revelling in its ability to profit from human insecurity. But the more depressing impression to emerge from When I Feel Like Crap..., a verbatim show constructed from interviews and online surveys with “self-identifying women” of all ages (and, it's implied, backgrounds), isn't the known problem that personal appearance is a political issue, but the unknown extent to which that policing has been internalised, as one voice after another confesses to judging others as severely as herself.

More upsetting still is the extent to which these women have risked, and experienced, physical harm as a result of their obsession with body image. One woman describes her most successful diet as smoking rather than eating; two others gave birth to premature babies because they willingly malnourished themselves while pregnant; one was hospitalised with excess acid after eating only oranges and another destroyed her metabolism and ultimately developed cancer of the rectum from a lifetime of extreme dieting. When a woman listing off her approaches to weight loss says “anorexia is the only thing I've never done”, the pressing need for better education about physical and mental health couldn't be more clear.

The material is cumulatively devastating, yet Mighty Heart – researcher-performers Lisa-Marie Hoctor and Sam Edwards – leaven it with defiant humour and a buoyancy reminiscent of the Eggs Collective. Dressed in skin-tight leopard print that embraces every one of their lumps and bumps, they sing one interview in the style of a Disney princess (their gift to the woman told that she was too heavy, by a mere 2kg, to play the role of Tinkerbell in Disneyland) and transform a “Scouse beauty routine” into a cheeky game show. And there are just enough stories of women rejecting the entire premise of body image policing, whether by wearing “loads of make-up because it's always in my size” or recovering from bulimia and beginning to find genuine pleasure in the way they look, to make the note of hope at the end of the show chime real.

That hope is dependent on all bodies and shapes being accepted. It's no good celebrating the natural curves of “real women” (cf the Dove campaign) if it leaves naturally thin women feeling condemned as less than real. This is where the note of inclusion struck by the phrase “self-identifying women” is so vital. “No one aspires to be normal,” says one woman, but perhaps they might if the notion of normal were expanded beyond its narrow limit to encompass the full spectrum of humanity.

- MC

When I Feel Like Crap I Google Kim Kardashian Fat is on at 16.40 at Silk Nightclub as part of PBH Free Fringe until August 27th (not Tuesdays). See venue for accessibility information - http://freefringe.org.uk/edinburgh-fringe-festival/when-i-feel-like-crap-i-google-kim-kardashian-fat/2016-08-17/

On the diet industry: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/07/fat-profits-food-industry-obesity

On sugar addiction: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/07/fat-profits-food-industry-obesity

On physical and psychological effects of dieting: http://eating-disorders.org.uk/information/the-psychology-of-dieting/

On anorexia and mental health: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/e/eating-disorders

On the language that surrounds gender non-conformity: http://morganpotts.com/2016/gender-discourse-an-open-letter-to-sisters-uncut/

The Eggs Collective: http://www.eggscollective.com/

Mighty Heart's site: http://mightyhearttheatre.wixsite.com/mightyhearttheatre

If you're in or near Manchester, the Fashion on the Ration exhibition is wonderful: http://www.iwm.org.uk/exhibitions/iwm-north/fashion-on-the-ration-1940s-street-style

ZERO DOWN // Angel On The Corner TC

Among the 17 women interviewed or writing first-person about their experience of political activism in Helena Earnshaw and Angharad Penrhyn Jones' invigorating book Here We Stand is Eileen Chubb, founder of the charity and campaign Compassion in Care. She became, much to her own surprise, an activist after working for years in care homes run by Bupa, and discovering widespread abuse of the elderly inhabitants. At the bottom of the homepage of the CiC website is a melancholy dedication to Pat Gifford that reads: “After witnessing the abuse of a loved one in a care home, Pat Gifford was so affected by this experience that she became increasingly afraid of growing older and needing care herself that she took her own life.”

Zero Down is set in a small-town care home in which abuse of the elderly patients is carried out on a daily basis: not by staff but by management, who allow the store cupboard to run out of wet wipes and humans to sit in their own faeces for hours before bothering to send a nurse to them. These are all typical of the routine cost-cutting carried out by an organisation run in the service of profitability and not in accord with basic humanity. Working on zero-hour contracts, the nurses are expected to pass their shift not at bedsides but in a staff room, waiting to be summoned by electronic buzzer to a specific patient, clocking in only as and when they are called. Unsurprisingly, this raises the women's own stress levels and sets them at odds with each other.

Writer Sarah Hehir tells two stories here: the visible one of the working women on stage, and the invisible one of the disintegrating humans trapped in their beds. One of the nurses, Benni, is a single mother of three at the mercy of a neoliberal economy, failing to keep her head above water because the system is constructed for her to drown: sympathy for her contracts each time she spews a racist slur, then expands as she reveals her detailed knowledge of individual patients' tastes, habits and frailties. That kindness is contrasted with the exploitative purpose of Erin, an aspiring journalist reading up on female war reporters as she attempts to make her mark by following the example of Eileen Chubb. The distance between conniving Erin and compassionate Eileen becomes clear, however, when the young woman confesses that changing the soiled nappy of a patient makes her think that euthanasia is a good idea. Her tone creates an ambiguity as to whether she means self-elective.

The picture of decrepitude that Hehir presents has almost nothing appealing about it. It's not just a dramatic construct that Benni is the mother of small children: whether at home or at work, her life is one of changing nappies. But she also describes carrying a male patient to the toilet to spare his feelings of mortification at being so infantilised: an act of generosity that helps him continue to value his life. But that generosity also requires the energy of the young: in Michael Haneke's acutely observed film Amour, an elderly man grows unable to care for his declining wife, and when money can no longer buy what she needs, he, like Erin, begins to see euthanasia as their only option. The question woven through both strands of Zero Down is one of value: how shall we value human existence, and what happens when power and profit are the margins or expression of that value?

- MC

Zero Down is on at 13.00 at Pleasance Courtyard until August 29th (not 18th). Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Hearing Loop - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/zero-down

Publisher page for Here We Stand: http://www.honno.co.uk/dangos.php?ISBN=9781909983021

Compassion in Care: http://www.compassionincare.com/

What exactly is neoliberalism?: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/booked-3-what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-wendy-brown-undoing-the-demos

Alexander Zeldin discussing Beyond Caring, his play about workers on zero-hours contracts: http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/the-director-as-god-is-bullshit/

Diary of a woman who chose euthanasia: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/23/euthanasia.cancer

Two views on Haneke's Amour: https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/feb/28/amour-advert-for-euthanasia and http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/surviving-amour

FINDING JOY // Vamos Theatre

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

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

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

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

- HB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONLY BONES // Kallo Collective & Aurora Nova

In Only Bones, we watch a solo physical performer (Thomas Monckton) manipulate his own body parts to create the illusion of characters, relationships, and scenes that, when taken all together, conjure a surreal story of evolution, arriving at the presentation of himself as a whole human being.

The setting is in the Dissecting Room at the Summerhall, once used as a veterinary lecture demonstration theatre. This enhances the anatomical focus on the human body and its movement capabilities. The most important set element, though, is the hanging shaded lamp that masks Monckton’s face until it’s revealed as part of the exploratory journey through the body that begins at his toes and ends with the voice.

The lamp casts light and shadow that make the body parts appear as spotlit objects in space - how do they move? What can they do? This, in turn, triggers the imagination, harnessing the human capacity to anthropomorphise and project story onto inert, non-literal stimuli.

Monckton trained in circus technique in his native New Zealand, before studying physical theatre-clown at the renowned École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in France. The intense study of physical control and analysis of bodily expression these institutes provides allows Monckton to explore the communicative capacities of minimal human movement. Our imagination conjures prehistoric sea creatures from the independently undulating digits of a weaving hand; a couple setting out to consumate a date appear in the movement of wrists and fingers; genetic experiments resulting in hybrid life-forms emerge from a pair of fists and associated vocalisations.

As his body discovers itself, creating a head, using the plasticity of his facial skin to mold identities, and at last using verbal language, we are shown an abstract origin story that spans all of life and arrives in humanity.

- KK

Only Bones is on at 20:30 at Summerhall until August 28th. Wheelchair Access - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/only-bones

On the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq: http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/siryan/academy/theatres/lecoq,%20jacques.htm

Only Bones OU - a parallel video work stemming from the Only Bones project: https://vimeo.com/143630618

Dr Vincent Bellonzi on plasticity of the human body: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0XZfDZxR9g

Types of body movements: http://philschatz.com/anatomy-book/contents/m46398.html

‘Imagining Other Minds: Anthropomorphism Is Hair-Triggered but Not Hare- Brained’: https://static.squarespace.com/static/51e3f4ede4b053e5f0062efd/t/5474a9b4e4b09a953cc54329/1416931764853/anthropomorphism-is-hair-triggered.pdf

‘Evolution of Life’ timeline: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17453-timeline-the-evolution-of-life/

BEND IN THE RIVER // Deep Water Theatre Collective

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

- KA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GHOSTS AND HAUNTINGS // Chris French

Nearly 40 per cent of the UK population claim to have experienced a ghost, according to a MORI poll from the late 1990s, while a smaller but significant percentage – around a third – claim to have had some kind of paranormal experience. In this talk for the Edinburgh Skeptics on the Fringe, professor of anomalistic psychology (basically ‘weird stuff’) at Goldsmith’s University, Chris French, explains what might be going on from a rational, science-based perspective.
 
What follows is a straightforward explanation of several normal physical and psychological phenomena that cause people to believe they’ve witnessed some kind of paranormal activity. For example, many reports of poltergeists turn out to be straightforward hoaxes, notably including the founders of the modern spiritualist church, Maggie and Kate Fox, and the Amityville Horror which was popularised in a novel and films. Both have since been roundly debunked but still persist in popular culture as real.
 
One major cause of haunting stories is the poorly-understood condition of sleep paralysis, where a person partially wakes up during REM (dreaming) sleep. It’s remarkably common, and somewhere between eight and 40 per cent of the population are thought to experience it. Normally, the body is paralysed during REM sleep to prevent us acting out the physical motions of our dreams, so unexpectedly waking up in this state can be terrifying and disorientating. Even more distressing is the accompaniment of ‘dream hangovers’, such as visual, auditory and physical hallucinations. Given the similarities of these reported experiences across cultures, variously attributed to everything from sex demons (incubi and succubi) in Europe to the souls of unbaptised children on St Lucia, it’s likely that sleep paralysis is a much more common cause of ghost stories than previously realised.
 
We’re also hugely prone to creating things that simply aren’t there, such as seeing the face of the Virgin Mary in a cheese sandwich or inferring a ghostly whisper in crackling static. Alternatively, we fail to notice the blindingly obvious explanations for seemingly strange things right in front of our faces, as shown by the clever ‘Gorillas in our Midst’ study.
 
As French explains, the most important requirements for seeing ghosts are context and belief. You’re much more likely to spot a spectre if you’re a strong believer creeping around a reputed haunted house than a skeptic strolling through Sainsbury’s. But if ghosts are real, why should there be a difference? Like Fox Mulder in the X Files, some people just want to believe, and all too often their brain tricks them into thinking that they do. There is no cure, but approaching all paranormal claims with a broad, evidence-based and skeptical mindset will undoubtedly help.

- KA

 
Edinburgh Skeptics in the Pub is hosting Skeptics on the Fringe, Undiluted Brilliance, with a different speaker every night until August 28th, at 19:45 in the Banshee Labyrinth on Niddry Street - http://www.edinburghskeptics.co.uk/events-calendar/
 
Goldsmiths Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit: http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/

The Fox sisters and the rap on spiritualism: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-fox-sisters-and-the-rap-on-spiritualism-99663697/?no-ist

The Amityville Horror hoax: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/ghosts/amityville.asp

Information about sleep paralysis – NHS Choices: http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Sleep-paralysis/Pages/Introduction.aspx

The invisible gorilla experiment – an example of inattentional blindness: http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gorilla_experiment.html

SCARY SHIT // Rhiannon Faith

When a friend is going through a tough time and doesn’t want to talk about it, it can be hard to know how best to help them. Bring round a bottle of prosecco or three? Fire up Mean Girls on Netflix and order in pizza? Instead, Rhiannon Faith and Maddy Morgan made a show about it.
 
From the outset, Faith is a self-confessed neurotic, scared of everything. The show begins with a list of phobias, from the exotic to the mundane. Ablutophobia – the fear of washing. Arachibutyrophobia – the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth, and so on. Then it delves deeper, exploring darker fears about sex and motherhood – the things we shouldn’t talk about. Morgan is the patient foil to her panicking friend, always running to the rescue and mopping up the drama.
 
To try and get over her fears, Faith seeks the help of her mother-in-law, psychotherapist Joy Griffiths. Together, she and Morgan attend cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), videotaping the sessions and interpreting them as dance pieces. First up, we learn that feelings of anxiety are the result of the body’s response to stressful situations – the classic adrenaline-fuelled ‘fight or flight’ reaction causing the shallow breath, racing heart and knotted stomach of a panic attack. Then we see CBT in action as Faith conquers her fear of answering the phone, stemming from being dumped over the phone by an early boyfriend. It’s played for over-dramatic laughs, but does a good job of illustrating the process of therapy, taking back control of past events and the feelings they evoke.
 
Halfway through, the focus shifts. The pair explore their formative teenage sexual experiences, each distressing in their own right and leaving their mark on the adult woman. We’re made to watch Morgan unravel in front of us, while Faith can only try and punch through the wall of pain to help her friend. It’s unsettling and achingly hard to watch in places, but ultimately a testament to friendship and the benefits of identifying, acknowledging and ultimately tackling our deepest fears.

- KA

 
Scary Shit is on at 13.45 at Pleasance Courtyard until August 29th (not 15th or 22nd). Wheelchair Acess, Level Access, Hearing Loop - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/scary-shit

Rhiannon Faith: https://rhiannonfaith.com/

MIND – the mental health charity: http://www.mind.org.uk/

Anxiety and panic attacks: http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/anxiety-and-panic-attacks/#.V7BE95grLIU

Help for survivors of sexual assault: http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Sexualhealth/Pages/Sexualassault.aspx

What is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)?: http://www.babcp.com/Public/What-is-CBT.aspx

The phobia list: http://phobialist.com/

TEAM VIKING // James Rowland

James Rowland’s monologue, Team Viking, is a natural second act to Liz Rothschild’s Outside The Box, which I had just watched. Both shows highlight the importance and the challenges of giving a loved one the burial they want, but tackle this sensitive subject in completely different ways.
 
Drawing on a (mostly) true story, the tale starts with his father’s funeral. It’s a huge but slightly soulless affair at which Rowland has given a moving eulogy. We then flash back to the childhood origins of Team Viking – Rowland and his friends Tom and Sarah – who are bound together by their shared love of re-enacting scenes from Kirk Douglas’ 1958 film The Vikings, full of “fighting, quaffing and wenching”. They grow up and continue much along these lines, supporting each other through the ups and downs of life: Tom the fun-loving Lothario, Sarah the organised engineer and James, who plays all the other parts.
 
Suddenly everything changes when Tom is diagnosed with a rare, aggressive and totally incurable cancer. Primary cardiac angiosarcoma is cancer of the heart muscle – a condition affecting around 0.001 per cent of the population. He’s not quite one in a million, but it’s close. The disease is a death sentence, claiming Tom’s life in a matter of months, and Rowland takes us through the heart-breaking process of watching his best friend slowly fade away knowing there is nothing that can be done.
 
For his part, Tom is adamant that he wants the kind of funeral they’d play-acted as kids, cast adrift on a burning boat. He achieves it through some fairly spectacular emotional manipulation, leaving Rowland and Sarah to figure out how to actually make it happen. The technicalities of delivering Tom’s big finale are described in fraught, hilarious detail, far removed from Liz Rothschild’s calm explanations of organising a funeral of your choosing and the legal aspects of obtaining a dead body for burial. It’s not an orthodox ending, and some parts of it were technically illegal, but Team Viking is a moving story of friendship, loss, and the importance of giving someone you love the send-off they desire and deserve.

- KA

 
Team Viking is on at 14:55 at Just The Tonic at the Community Project until August 28th (not 15th). Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Relaxed Performance - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/team-viking

Dead right – who does a body belong to?: http://www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk/2009/07/dead-right/

Cardiac sarcoma: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/277297-overview

Macmillan cancer support - at the end of life: http://www.macmillan.org.uk/information-and-support/coping/at-the-end-of-life

Diagnosis of Liz Rothschild’s Fringe show Outside the Box: http://thesickofthefringe.com/week-two/outside-the-box

Death on the Fringe: https://deathonthefringe.wordpress.com/

ADVENTURES IN MENSTRUATING // Chella Quint

Halfway through her (ahem) bloody brilliant show about periods, Chella Quint drops an amazing fact that makes the audience gasp. In E. Nesbit’s classic Victorian story The Railway Children, a group of kids alert a train driver to stop by taking off their red flannel petticoats and waving them in the air. The reason they were red, says Quint, is to absorb and disguise the blood from their periods, which were allowed to run freely down their legs.
 
It’s not the only fascinating fact we learn. For example, it’s a myth that bears and sharks are more likely to attack menstruating women. And touching mayonnaise, tomato sauce or milk while you’ve got the painters in - depending on whether you live in France, Italy or India - won’t lead to culinary disaster. But it is true that Victorian doctors believed that female behaviour was affected by the womb travelling around the body, hence the term ‘hysteria’ from the Greek word hyster, meaning uterus. (Although the idea that the treatment for this condition was stimulation to orgasm with impressively-designed mechanical vibrators is actually a bit of a myth).
 
Delving through advertising archives dating back to the 1920s, Quint explores the creation of modern myths about menstruation. We can thank the Mad Men of ad-land for the idea that periods are shameful, embarrassing and unhygienic. In her role as an educator, Chella was shocked to discover that many teenagers think that periods are blue, rather than blood red, after years of advertising blue-washing. We’ll all be familiar with blue liquid poured coyly on to pads, sky blue branding and ‘discrete’ floral packaging abound. It wasn’t until 2011 that a sanitary product ad even featured a delicate spot of stylised red, and we had to wait until this year to see real (non-menstrual) blood in a commercial.
 
I’m not sure every woman is quite ready to wear the red, blobby Stains™ badges and jewellery that Quint has designed (aka ‘leak chic’) aiming to turn embarrassment into a badge of honour. But as she says, periods can be private but they don’t have to be secret. We bloody well need to talk about them.

- KA

Adventures in Menstruating is on at 18:40 in the Banshee Labyrinth on 13th-15th, 17th-22nd and 24th-28th August Audio Description, BSL, Relaxed Performance - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/adventures-in-menstruating-with-chella-quint

Period Positive website: https://periodpositive.wordpress.com

Stains™ Leak Chic: http://www.stainstm.com/

BBC Radio 4 documentary, A Bleeding Shame: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07glw8b

'How I made the first feminine hygiene ad ever to feature blood': http://jezebel.com/5856336/how-i-made-the-first-feminine-hygiene-ad-to-show-blood

New Bodyform period ad uses actual blood and it’s amazing: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/06/09/period-commercial-blood_n_10377890.html

No, no, no! The Victorians didn’t invent the vibrator: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/10/victorians-invent-vibrator-orgasms-women-doctors-fantasy

TRACING GRACE // OffTheWallTheatreCo

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

- KA

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

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

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

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

TUMOUR HAS IT // Karen Hobbs

They say write what you know (except when they say not to), so if a performer is diagnosed with a serious illness, they will inevitably consider using it as the basis of a show. For Karen Hobbs, her experience of cervical cancer became her “usp” (unique selling point) and she has created Tumour Has It to tell the full story.

Cancer comes with a ready-made narrative structure. There's the back-story (life before cancer), an inciting incident (diagnosis), challenges and solutions (testing and treatment), a clear hero (the performer), an even clearer antagonist (the cancer, which Hobbs named Svetlana), an inner struggle - literally - where the stakes couldn't be higher, and some degree of resolution at the end. So the question is not what story to tell but how to tell it: which metaphors to invest in, and which to reject. At one point, Hobbs appears as a boxer, complete with audio of sports channel-style commentators - but the fight against cancer never starts because there is nothing there for her to punch.

Through the show, Hobbs regularly says “Thank you for coming” to the audience. It seems to reflect the changes she went through, as if each step generated a slightly different Karen Hobbs who must introduce herself anew. There are obvious physical changes by the end of the story, due to the surgery to remove the tumour, but her attitude and mindset have changed as well. Telling this story isn't just about raising awareness or encouraging people to go for a smear test when invited, although this is clearly an important part of her motivation for doing it; telling this story also helps Hobbs reassert control after both body and mind have been hijacked by cancer.

- MR

Tumour Has It is on at 14.50 at Underbelly Med Quad until August 29th (not 17th). Wheelchair Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/karen-hobbs-tumour-has-it

Karen Hobbs’s blog: https://quarterlifecancer.com/

A Cancer Research UK blogpost on how metaphors for cancer that involve fighting or war can be motivational but also harmful: http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2015/09/28/may-i-take-your-metaphor-how-we-talk-about-cancer/

The Eve Appeal supports awareness of and research into gynaecological cancers: https://eveappeal.org.uk/

LOVELY LADY LUMP // Lana Schwarcz

Lana Schwarcz says she hates the concept of the “cancer journey”. After all, she wasn't going anywhere, and there was no chance of leaving the breast cancer behind. Nevertheless, she acknowledges the irony of cancer providing a good story and comedic material for her show, Lovely Lady Lump.

Familiar narrative elements resonate with anyone who has experience of cancer: the way medical professionals communicate “good news and bad news”; inappropriate songs in the MRI scanner (Queen’s “Who wants to live forever”, anyone?); tests and treatments that strip privacy and intimacy from your body. A recurring motif in Schwarcz’s show is when she stands topless, arms above her head, in position for radiotherapy, and tells the hospital staff jokes. As she tells us, by now she is entirely comfortable baring her breasts in front of strangers.

Schwarcz begins by asking the audience to raise their hands if they have cancer or have survived it, or if they know someone who has. As well as letting her gauge who she is performing for, it allows even someone with little or no knowledge of cancer to see that there are others here who do share these experiences. It brings the audience together, shifting our different perspectives towards each other. Theorist Victor Turner called such a collective state "communitas" - there is a shared understanding, which means we are here not to discover a new story but to collectively bear witness to another person who has lived through it. By the end of the show, Schwarcz rediscovers the journey metaphor and decides to own it. An important part of her journey, it seems, was accepting that she was on one.

- MR

Lovely Lady Lump is on at 16.00 at Gilded Balloon Teviot until August 29th (not 15th). Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/lovely-lady-lump

Narrative medicine is an emerging field of research that recognises the significance of the stories people tell about their own illnesses: http://sps.columbia.edu/narrative-medicine

Here is an interesting discussion of cancer, rites and communitas: http://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/articles/winterspring2013/cancer-rites-and-remission-society

Elena Semino, professor of linguistics and verbal art, discussing her research into journey and battle metaphors in cancer: http://theconversation.com/whether-you-battle-cancer-or-experience-a-journey-is-an-individual-choice-39142

COME WITH ME // Helen Duff

In a world where magazine headlines scream about ever more exciting ways to achieve the heady heights of sexual pleasure, a comedy show based on the inability to hit the ‘big O’ is an oddity. The causes are many and varied, ranging from the physical impacts of health conditions, drugs or the menopause, to psychological issues such as fear or anxiety. In fact, depending on which set of figures you believe, somewhere between five and 12 per cent of women suffer from anorgasmia – the inability to experience an orgasm despite receiving sexual stimulation. Comedian Helen Duff is one of them, and turns what could be a frustrating situation into a frank and funny show climaxing with an anarchic group experience.  
 
Over the course of an hour, she morphs from the human embodiment of a sperm – clad in blue raincoat and leggings – through to a larger-than-life vulva complete with inexplicable Yorkshire accent, removable hair and prominent clitoris (a knitted pink bobble-hat). Together, we are aiming to recreate the mystery of the female orgasm. Our template for this exercise is a survey Duff has carried out, asking people to describe their experiences of pleasure. An all over sneeze combined with a really good itch. The feeling of having Belgian chocolate licked off your genitals. Like eating eight mangoes all at once. Almost dying. Like riding a unicorn through the sky. In the absence of unicorns, mangoes and chocolate, Duff hands out tools to the audience to help us come together: packets of ginger nuts, eight bananas, feather dusters and pots of bubble mixture.
 
By the end of the show, she’s riding across the cramped stage on the back of a burly man wearing a unicorn horn, beaten on the bottom by packets of biscuits and gagging on half-chewed bananas. The result is a breathless, sweaty mess, and judging by the look on Duff’s face, she seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.

- KA 

Come With Me is on at 17.45 at Pleasance That until August 19th (not 15th). Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Hearing Loop - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/helen-duff-come-with-me

Information about anorgasmia: http://www.lanarkshiresexualhealth.org/unable-to-orgasm-anorgasmia/

In Psychology Today - 'Help! I can’t have an orgasm!': https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/save-your-sex-life/201111/help-i-cant-have-orgasm

OUTSIDE THE BOX - A LIVE SHOW ABOUT DEATH / Liz Rothschild

“Talking about sex doesn’t make you pregnant, talking about death doesn’t make you die.” This quote from Jane Duncan Rogers appears on the flyer for Liz Rothschild’s thought-provoking and unexpectedly jolly show about death. Although the subject matter is literally morbid and Rothschild’s description of washing the body of her dead mother moved me to tears, it’s hard not to smile while watching someone weave their own wicker coffin to the strains of Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life – apparently the UK’s top choice of funeral song.
 
Rothschild is a funeral celebrant who runs a ‘green’ burial ground and is full of lively passion about death. Through personal stories she exposes the taboos in our society, explaining how death has become disconnected from family, community and wider society in our modern age.  She points out that every town will have NCT childbirth groups, but where are the death groups? After all, we’re all born, but we all die too. Most of the audience had heard of Braxton Hicks – the ‘practice’ contractions that start towards the end of pregnancy – yet only two people were familiar with Cheyne-Stokes, the changed pattern of breathing that can signify the end is near.
 
She also highlights the shocking fact that around 70 per cent of us will die without leaving a will or a less formal letter of wishes. This can mean that people end up without the burial they would have wanted, and even leave funeral costs unplanned for and unpaid. At the same time, we’re warned about the ‘death industry’, with some unscrupulous souls willing to exploit a lucrative and reliable customer base plagued with grief and guilt. The show certainly prompted me to think about the plans for my own demise (or rather, the current total lack of them) and realise that it’s a subject I’ve never broached with any of my family.
 
Medical science still cannot heal those who are finally dying, and at some point it will be our time to go. Although funerals are for the living rather than the dead, out of respect for human dignity and agency, we should be starting conversations about death right now. (KA)
 
Outside The Box - A Live Show About Death is on at 11.50 at Summerhall until August 21st. Relaxed Performances - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/outside-the-box-a-live-show-about-death

More on the Death on the Fringe series: https://deathonthefringe.wordpress.com/

Compassion in Dying: http://compassionindying.org.uk/

The DeathCafe movement, running events aiming to encourage public conversations about death: http://deathcafe.com/

The Good Funeral Guide: http://www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk/

Final Fling – advice on life and death decisions as well as planning tools: https://www.finalfling.com/

Hospice UK, for information about hospice care at the end of life: https://www.hospiceuk.org/

Living Well Dying Well train doulas (companions) for the dying and run public and professional courses http://www.lwdwtraining.uk/

Natural Death Centre, providing free advice about death and burial: http://naturaldeath.org.uk/

Research paper on public attitudes to death, dying and bereavement from Nottingham University: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/srcc/documents/projects/srcc-project-summary-public-attitudes.pdf

Cheyne-Stokes breathing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyne%E2%80%93Stokes_respiration

DELAY DETACH // Sonder Theatre

“Delay, distract, depersonalise, detach” is advice on how to communicate during an intense and escalating conversation with someone who has borderline personality disorder. It is an effective tool that Sophie has found online in this two-hander about a pair of friends from aged 5 to aged 70. At least, it is effective until the point at which Caitlin discovers what Sophie has been doing and resents the way she has been ‘handled’.

The discovery is yet another bump in the course of their relationship. Most of the bumps they encounter are ostensibly consequences of Caitlin’s mood disorder - and yet both of them have issues, which are not too well defined and so save the play from being about specific psychological conditions. For most of the narrative, Caitlin is in need of attention and support, so when an ageing Sophie starts to show symptoms of dementia, their roles get reversed. There aren’t many firm conclusions to be drawn from this story, except that friendships have serendipitous origins and unexpected turns, and that most of us depend on our friends to get by.

- MR

Delay Detach is on at 19.40 at Greenside @ Infirmary Street until August 20th (not 14th) - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/delay-detach

Mind on Borderline Personality Disorder: http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/borderline-personality-disorder-bpd/#.V63ygtArKUs

Advice for friends and family of people with BPD: http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/borderline-personality-disorder-bpd/for-friends-and-family/

Friendship and mental health: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/f/friendship-and-mental-health

 An example of delay, distract, depersonalize, detach: http://www.bpdcentral.com/blog/?Tips-for-Communicating-with-Someone-With-Borderline-Disorder-8

The Alzheimer’s Society on dementia: https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents.php?categoryID=200360

EAT. SLEEP. BATHE. REPEAT. // Act One

The title of Eat. Sleep. Bathe. Repeat refers directly to the routines that are as vital to the residents in a home for men with “low-functioning” autism as they are to the staff. The drama begins when these routines are interrupted by the arrival of James, a young man who needs holiday work but has no experience of caring for people with disabilities.

The narrative follows James as he gets to know everyone (including himself), and as such it adopts his naive neurotypical perspective. This, coupled with the fact that much of the dialogue is comedic, makes for discomforting watching at times. While non-autistic characters - particularly James - develop during the show, autistic characters are much less dynamic in the narrative. Their actions and changes in mood are often presented as random, inexplicable and dangerous. The play is based on true events but while it may be drawing on real people and experiences (albeit seen through a neurotypical lens), it risks falling back to one-dimensional portrayals of autism.

However, by presenting five characters with a variety of traits and needs, Eat. Sleep. Bathe. Repeat shows some of the diversity of autism even within the low-functioning end of the spectrum. And while most of the residents seen on stage are non-verbal, the play does succeed in giving each of them a distinct character, perhaps again reflecting the people who inspired it.

- MR

Eat. Sleep. Bathe. Repeat. is on at 20.25 at theSpace on the Mile until August 13th. Wheelchair Access, Level Access - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/eat-sleep-bathe-repeat

Cian Binchy, an autistic performer, brought The Misfit Analysis to the Fringe last year: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/we-need-autistic-actors-playing-autistic-roles-on-stage-says-curious-incident-adviser-10454728.html

Sara Barrett calls for authentic autistic voices in popular culture: https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2016/apr/03/autism-voices-books-awareness-week

An interview with Steve Silberman, author of Neurotribes, including his dislike of the term “low-functioning”: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/09/02/436742377/neurotribes-examines-the-history-and-myths-of-the-autism-spectrum

Information about autism from the National Autistic Society: http://www.autism.org.uk/