DOLLY WANTS TO DIE // Lung

Playtime is over, and now that they’re on their own Dolly and Mister Bear can get back to their foul-mouthed ranting, drug-taking, suicide-attempting day. Dolly wants to die, and she is quite clear about that.

Over the 45 minutes of the piece, we look on as Dolly attempts on her own life in ways which range from immolation to asking an audience member to smash her china head with a gigantic (on the scale of a doll) dildo. Helen Monks’ (Dolly) performance of the character’s more or less surreal suicide attempts resonates with that of Maria de Meideros as Karenine Battavia in the 1996 film News From The Good Lord. 

Dolly Wants To Die doesn’t directly explore the contentious topic of assisted suicide - but rather the difficulties faced by Generation Y within a saturated job market, leading them to move back with family (and their childhood toys) as they are not able to find work at the end of their education. 

In both cases, that of the film and Dolly Wants to Die, the darkly comic repetition of the character’s failure to die points to questions of agency. While Dolly has been around for what she deems to be long enough, doesn’t have any internal organs and “no pension plan in sight”, she doesn’t find the help to die when and how she chooses.

Where medicalisation could be seen to promote longevity over quality of life, and in the austere contexts of cuts to disability allowances, our relationship to end-of-life choices is changing rapidly. Debates around assisted suicide ought to be nuanced, and opening up uncomfortable conversations around death and dying is a useful starting point to making considered decisions for ourselves and our loved ones.

- Leo Burtin

Dolly Wants To Die is on at 16.10 at Underbelly Cowgate until August 28th. Hearing Loop available - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/dolly-wants-to-die 

Internet Movie Database entry on News from the Good Lord: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116081/ 

Article on the medicalisation of dying: http://www.bmj.com/content/324/7342/905.1

Information about Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20696006-being-mortal 

Information on Liz Carr’s Assisted Suicide the Musical: http://notdeadyetuk.org/assisted-suicide-musical/ 

Guardian Article on cuts to disability benefits: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/29/employment-and-support-allowance-the-disability-benefit-cuts-you-have-not-heard-about

ZERO // Popcorn Productions

Zero by Popcorn Productions is about surviving trauma in the transitional period from teenage years to adulthood; it is also about consent and questions our ability to relate events in a linear, narrative form. 

The staging of the piece is minimal. One performer (Grace Vance as Beth), a stool, a cigarette and a lighter. Beth has stepped out of her own 21st birthday party to talk to us. 

It takes her a while to find her feet, to get comfortable with us listening to her story, to what she has to say. As she begins, she could be seen to be no different to any other twenty-something, confident woman. She’s embarrassed by her dad’s dancing and keeps an eye on her best friend as she makes out with he DJ. 

It soon becomes apparent that Beth has a lot more to tell us, and that perhaps she is finding the words as she goes. At its core, Zero is a disruption of familiar narratives of trauma - where a singular episode triggers a chain of events leading to a culminating point; in Beth’s case, an attempted suicide. This is not how it happened for Beth, and this is not how she tells the story.

Rachel Ruth Kelly’s script reveals relatively early on that Beth has experienced “severe suicidal ideation”. This is the first diagnosis Zero offers us, and as it unfolds we find out more about Beth, her survival of bulimia nervosa, her own and her family’s relationship to depression.

As the piece develops, we begin to piece together Beth’s allusions to past events and episodic storytelling in an attempt to bring clarity to her experience.

As well as the character’s complex relationship to her health, Zero explores Beth’s romantic relationship with a man, experiencing abuse, and illustrates the complexity of the ill-understood idea of “traumatic bonding”, which can lead abuse survivors to maintain or develop feelings for their abusers.

(LB)

ZERO is on at 13.00 at Underbelly Cowgate until August 28th. Hearing Loop available - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/zero 

An animated video on consent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQbei5JGiT8

Research on traumatic bonding: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/springer/vav/1993/00000008/00000002/art00002

STORIES TO TELL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT // Francesca Millican-Slater

Francesca Millican-Slater's work tends to be autobiographical: Me, Myself and Miss Gibbs traced her journey across the UK in search of the recipient of an enigmatic postcard, while Forensics of a Flat unfolded the history of her peculiar home in Birmingham, a former office above a shop. The same is sort-of true of this show, but only in its starting point: as documented on the accompanying blog, she experiences chronic insomnia, and the stories she tells over the course of the hour are a reflection of the fantastical thoughts that plague her through the night.

Insomnia is a common problem – the NHS estimates that one in three people in the UK experience it regularly – and on the surface Millican-Slater's stories evoke the banal: one features a couple in a supermarket; another, a couple disturbed by the insistent loud music played by their neighbours after hours. A man in one story attempts to find friendship among his colleagues in a pork-pie factory; a man in another strikes up conversation with a cafe owner and a newspaper vendor on his early morning walks. However, each vignette quickly takes a Tales of the Unexpected detour towards the weird. The factory worker is demoted when he constructs a pastry penis; the street blares with noise as neighbours compete to play their own favoured style of music at the highest volume. The tone is more often kind than sinister, particularly in the tale of a mysterious matchmaker, a man who stalks people he knows to be single, then attempts to pair them up, functioning as an “analogue Tinder”.

Sleeplessness is a lonely and often furious place, and many of the characters in these stories are lonely and furious, too – particularly those already in couples. The overlap between insomnia and depression is suggested in an undercurrent hum of desire for meaning, or purpose, or connection, most audible in the story about the man who begins each day walking his neighbourhood, convinced that the world would fall apart if he didn't. The blue light that bathes Millican-Slater's face speaks of the computer screens that promise connection but only in isolation. Listening to her, the audience sit in isolation, too: joined together by her velveteen voice, spinning a web of strangeness.

(MC)

Stories To Tell in the Middle of the Night is on at 10.15 at Summerhall until August 28. See venue for accessibility information - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/stories-to-tell-in-the-middle-of-the-night

Basic insomnia facts: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Insomnia/Pages/Introduction.aspx

On the relationship between insomnia, anxiety and depression: https://sleepfoundation.org/insomnia/content/what-causes-insomnia

On the cultural rise of lack of sleep: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/10304984/Is-there-any-way-to-cure-insomnia.html

On mindfulness as a cure for insomnia: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/09/sleep-how-to-beat-insomnia

The blog accompanying the show: http://www.storiestotellinthemiddleofthenight.com/

HIP // Kriya Arts

Hip is an hour drifting through the Jungian collective unconsciousness; during the performance, Jolie Booth explores the serendipity of finding uncanny parallels with past lives. Based around found objects, Hip is a semi-autobiographical one woman show that starts by introducing us to a location caught between two timelines and personalities: the home of Anne Clarke during 60s bohemian Brighton, and a squat established by Jolie in 2002.

In homage to Aboriginal songlines which suggests location designates family, the audience is transported, in this extra live performance, to a cosy living room with cushions and cheese and pineapple nibbles. Acting as an aid to suspend disbelief, these props along with real love letters and transparencies of Annie’s eccentrically erotic art, are accompanied by Jolie’s soothing and passionate storytelling.

The title Hip comes from a Hip bone found amongst Annie’s possessions, eludes to a posthumous physical memory and is used to initiate a séance, in which the audience hold hands to connect with the presence of Annie. No longer spectators, they are now a tribe connected and enthralled by the memories of Jolie and Annie. Maffesoli (1996) describes tribes as a collective form of identity which is based on sentiment rather than rationality.

The hypnotic environment of light from an overhead projector used to display letters and poems from lovers and friends of Annie these are interwoven with vestiges from Jolie’s own life and there is an immediate and clear association. In later life Annie was consumed by alcoholism and died alone estranged from her family but Jolie suggests her funeral was well attended, if only by the patrons of her local drinking establishment. At the end of the play, Jolie explains that the hip bone isn’t human and is surely a memento from the Occult bookshop where she worked and frequented: just one of the glimpses into the community of 60s bohemian Brighton.

In respect for the dead, before we leave we join Jolie in a toast (with free tequila shots) to Annie’s life. This closes the circle of memory, love and loss. In a somnambulistic trance the audience leaves; Jolie has provided an authentic and human exploration of inherently unstable modern tribalism.

(LO)

Hip is on at 16.30 at ZOO (Venue 124) ntil August 27th. Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets, Relaxed Performance - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/hip

E15-mothers: https://en.squat.net/tag/e15-mothers/

Advisory Service for Squatters: http://www.squatter.org.uk/for-new-squatters/squatting-made-less-simple/

The lethality of loneliness - John Cacioppo at TEDxDesMoines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0hxl03JoA0

One-woman show Hip charting the times of Anne Clarke, who helped set up Infinity Foods: http://www.theargus.co.uk/leisure/stage/14483157.One_woman_show_Hip_charting_the_times_of_Anne_Clarke__who_helped_set_up_Infinity_Foods/

Dissecting and Detecting Stories in Found Objects and Remnants: http://hyperallergic.com/223735/dissecting-and-detecting-stories-in-found-objects-and-remnants/

What are song lines?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVOG-RKTFIo

PUSSYFOOTING // Knotworks

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

- Lewis Church

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

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

ANYTHING THAT GIVES OFF LIGHT // The TEAM & National Theatre of Scotland

Two Scotsmen and an American woman walk into a bar and... The set-up for fringe stalwarts the TEAM's collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland might sound jokey, but that's not how the action or fiercely political argument plays out. All three characters are experiencing an identity crisis of sorts, and seek brittle refuge in each other as they attempt to navigate or make sense of their disquietude. One of the Scottish men is sunk in toxic fury following the twin referenda of Independence and EU membership; the other no longer knows how to connect to the land of his birth, having lived in London for years; while the American woman is plagued by anxiety related to climate change.

The question that roils across the stage is: what constitutes identity? When the three first start chatting, it's innocuous stuff: whiskey and cinema, commodities and popular culture. But their road trip in a caravan to the west coast of Scotland is also a journey deeper into history, to the events that scar the land and seep into a country's consciousness. What they find in history, inevitably, is violence: in Scotland, the Highland Clearances, during which small-scale farmers were forcibly evicted from their land; mirrored in the Appalachians, home of the American woman, by the mass clearance of native Americans – enacted in part by the Scottish diaspora. This intertwining of roots is underscored by the presence of a live band, the Bengsons, who dress like clans women and play songs redolent of both landscapes.

The events re-enacted might seem to have no direct connection with the trio on stage – except that all three of them benefit from the exploitative capitalist structure that violence brought forth. Can the dedicated Scotsman really claim Adam Smith as a national hero, when the philosopher was the architect of the modern free market, and “threw the left-wing on the pyre” by giving them hope of a sympathetic liberalism? The fact that his friend works in London finance is a wedge between them; asked why he's so angry, he replies, reasonably, that it's because: “our political system is sick”.

In her book Depression: A Public Feeling, academic Ann Cvetkovich gives a cogent argument for tracing the roots of individual depression back to “histories of colonialism, genocide, slavery, legal exclusion, and everyday segregation and isolation that haunt all of our lives”. Anything That Gives Off Light brings the ghosts of those histories to crude and noisy life; the characters might not be exorcised of their grief by it, but they at least find a new accommodation with each other.

- Maddy Costa

Anything That Gives Off Light is on at 19.30 at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre until 26 August. See venue for accessibility information - http://www.eif.co.uk/2016/light#.V73Ji45LUfo

On identity crises among adolescents and adults: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201203/are-you-having-identity-crisis

Poet Harry Giles on identity and writing in Scots: https://harrygiles.org/2014/04/17/hou-writin-in-scots-maiters-tae-me/

How to fix America's identity crisis: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/a-new-american-melting-pot-214011

On depression as a response to anti-blackness: http://www.forharriet.com/2016/03/depression-is-political.html#axzz4I9SB3Wsn

Choosing action over despondency: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/05/dont-give-angry-population-hard-govern-depressed-population-easy

Ann Cvetkovich's website: http://www.anncvetkovich.com/

HAPPY YET? // Open Mind Productions

“Why can't you be happy?”
“Why can't you make something of yourself?”

Such are the questions asked of Torsten, the central character in Happy Yet?, by his bewildered family: questions for which there are no answers. Torsten has an unspecified and undiagnosed mental health condition that sometimes makes him incapable of getting out of bed and sometimes transforms him into a glitteringly energetic compulsive liar. He's already been rejected by his parents as the runt of their litter, whose only problem is a failure to “discipline” himself. When the play takes place, he is approaching 40 – but pretending to one of his many girlfriends to be nearing 30 – and living with a brother, much to the dismay of his sister-in-law, who is generally required to clear up the mess that his spurts of whirling devilry leave behind.

“Nothing he does makes any sense.”
“I don't know what he's thinking.”

The playwright, Katie Berglof, is young (she's studying at Edinburgh University), but writes from experience: her programme note mentions an uncle, “misdiagnosed and misunderstood”, who lived with her family “until his death”. It's easy to read Nina, the young girl on stage throughout Happy Yet?, as a representation of Berglof herself. Nina is the only character for whom Torsten isn't a problem: they play chess together, he helps her with her Ibsen homework, she chats with him non-judgementally. Seeing the action through Nina's innocent eyes encourages the audience to be less judgemental, too, especially when events become far-fetched (for instance, when Torsten persuades a police officer on duty to join him in getting drunk). Ibsen and his Swedish contemporary Strindberg hover in the background throughout, Berglof reaching towards them in her attempt to transmute the personal into the state-of-a-nation.

“All you do is throw pills at problems.”
“You can talk about these things in New York – not in Sweden.”

Throughout the play, Berglof makes jagged comments about (the paucity of) mental health provision in Sweden; she includes one character who works as a mental health professional, and makes her grimly unsympathetic. In Finland, alternative treatments for psychosis under the rubric Open Dialogue avoid medication and instead include family and friends in a circle of care, absorbing neurodiverse mental health into the community. By such measures, Torsten could be receiving the best care possible – except that, since the family themselves lack support, it's insufficient.

- Maddy Costa

Happy Yet? is on at 11.50 at Surgeon's Hall until August 27th. Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/happy-yet

Swedish mental health provision under attack: http://www.thelocal.se/20150818/swedish-mental-health-care-blasted-after-stabbing

Sweden's place in the global happiness index: https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/may/14/mental-illness-happiest-country-denmark

On compulsive lying disorder: http://www.compulsivelyingdisorder.com/what-is-compulsive-lying-disorder/

On bipolar disorder: https://www.rethink.org/diagnosis-treatment/conditions/bipolar-disorder

On Open Dialogue in Finland: http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2015/02/12/open-dialogue-care-model-put-mental-health-social-work-back-map/

and: http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/mental-health-alternatives/finland-open-dialogue

Open Dialogue in London: http://opendialogueapproach.co.uk/

Madlove, artist the Vacuum Cleaner's new approach to asylum: http://madlove.org.uk/

WHITEOUT // Barrowland Ballet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PULSE // Mairi Campbell

Full disclosure: when I hear Mairi Campbell’s voice, I feel at home. Campbell’s version of Auld Lang Syne is my regular YouTube go-to cry-song (it featured in Sex & the City The Movie) and when I hear her voice I feel safe, and warm, able to cry… I feel home. Watching Campbell’s journey to find her home and her authentic voice, therefore, felt like a journey I already associated with her.

Much has been written on the science of the voice and of music (Wellcome Collection’s This is a Voice exhibition being a recent major example), from the study of how the voice and ear physically understand and receive sound, to the chemicals released in our brain upon hearing music, to the physical benefits derived from dance. In Mairi Campbell’s Pulse, however, it is the quest to find the music which suited her body, to find the music which fit with her bones, which is the central journey. The history of music (and folk music in particular) is inherently bound to questions of nationality, or migration, of colonialism, and of intercultural exchange – and this is an area around which Pulse treads lightly – but in Campbell’s journey, an idea of ‘home’ feels less psychological or political and more physical, even genetic.

Recent scientific studies have attempted to locate either a music gene, or a scientific correlation between distinct populations and the music they make. For Campbell, her experience with both classical music (at Guildhall and in Mexico), and folk music (both with and without footwork in Canada and Scotland), seems to entail a complex interplay between genetics, nationality, gender norms, environmentalism and spirituality. For us as audience members, however, we experience her music in the bones, the ear, the heart. Part of me wishes I understood, scientifically and intellectually, how music and this voice makes me feel home… or maybe not… I wouldn’t want my brain to get in the way. (BL)

Pulse is at Summerhall Old Lab until August 28th. Venue is wheelchair accessible and BSL shows are available - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/mairi-campbell-pulse

On Mairi Campbell: https://mairicampbell.scot/

This is a Voice Exhibition: https://wellcomecollection.org/thisisavoice

Nature vs. Nurture in Music Taste: http://phys.org/news/2009-11-nature-nurture-reveals-musical-genes.html

TORCH // Flipping the Bird

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPIDERS BY NIGHT // Coffee House/Stepping Out

Spiders by Night is a double bill of short monologues developed, produced and presented by two Bristol-based theatre companies which describe their work as a collaboration between community members with mental health difficulties or addiction issues and professional artists.

Both monologues are minimally staged and invite audiences to focus their attention on the writing and delivery of both pieces. 'Waiting for ISON', the first monologue begins with Simon looking into space through a telescope in his attic and frantically checking his phone. Simon is an astronomy enthusiast following the comet’s journey across space.

For a while, the monologue merely hints at Simon’s obsessive relationship to his passion, and the isolation that it led to. During that time, we could easily be led to believe that we are about to be told a science fiction story, or one of adventure - and in any case, not an exploration of the character’s mental health. While we understand that Simon may not spend much time outside of his attic or interacting with others, one (human) friend regularly visits him.

When Simon begins to develop a friendship with a family of spiders living in his attic, visits from his (human) friend become less and less frequent, until they stop entirely after Simon calls the police to report the alleged murder of one of his spider friends. This poetic monologue subtly highlights that perhaps to care best for those with mental illnesses, approaches which include supporting people in their immediate environment might be more effective. The Open Dialogue Approach for example is a system of care developed in Western Lapland which works with people traditionally thought of as ‘the patient’ as well as their families or other networks.

The second part of the double bill, 'Insider', is told by a patient-cum-spider herself as she moves around and explores a secure psychiatric ward. With two crutches as additional spider legs, the performer’s physicality compliments the text’s description of the effects of psychiatric care on the patient’s body. Both the patient herself, and an outsider observer, the spider wants to escape and is not able to. While the reason for the character’s placement in a psychiatric ward isn’t made clear, the piece could be read as an exploration of dissociative disorder, or as a comment on the lack of agency the character has over her own care. (LB)

The run of Spiders By Night: A Double Bill of Exciting New Monologues at theSpace @ Surgeon's Hall has now finished. WA, LA, WC - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/spiders-by-night-a-double-bill-of-exciting-new-monologues

Coffee House community theatre company website: http://www.coffeehousetheatrecompany.com/#!about/cfp1

Stepping Out Theatre website: http://www.steppingouttheatre.co.uk/

Further information on the Open Dialogue approach system of care developed in Western Lapland: http://opendialogueapproach.co.uk/

Information about dissociative disorders from the NHS: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/dissociative-disorders/Pages/Introduction.aspx

COSMIC FEAR or THE DAY BRAD PITT GOT PARANOIA // Empty Deck

From their living room, two men and a woman become increasingly overwhelmed by news of natural catastrophes and the increased evidence of climate change as one of the biggest contemporary challenges for society to face up to.

Christian Lollike’s characters carve themselves a route out of their anxiety and helplessness in the face of global disasters by taking turns to stand in for Brad Pitt, and occasionally Angelina Jolie, as they seek to come up with a blockbuster that might just change the world.

The play rapidly unravels around the characters’ attempts at filming their own DIY Hollywood “eco-calypse” with a smartphone streaming to a screen at the back of the stage.

Lollike’s script is constructed over multiple layers, in a distinctly postmodern voice blurring our ability (at times) to identify who is speaking - might it be the characters in the play? the characters played by the characters in the play? or the actors as themselves?

The paranoia referred to in the title - more accurately paranoid schizophrenia - is present throughout the piece and explored in various guises. From the formal exploration of the illness in the writing itself, to the direct references to its symptoms and possible manifestations in the text and well-worn stage representations of madness (loud voices speaking at once, repeated laughter etc.).

Cosmic Fear’s artistic exploration of paranoid schizophrenia provides a lens through which to highlight the links between capitalism, climate change and mental (ill) health.

In art and poetry the weather has often provided rich images to express complex thoughts, feelings and emotions - it wouldn’t be difficult, for example to read Paul Verlaine’s Autumn Song as a poem about depression developing in old age.

With Cosmic Fear… however, the weather (cast as the Villain) is no longer a way to simply illustrate our relationship to our mental health, but a timely warning that the consequences of climate change to our environments are now directly impacting our sense of being. (LB)

Cosmic Fear or The Day Brad Pitt Got Paranoia is on at 15.00 at Bedlam Theatre until August 28th. Wheelchair Access, Level Access - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/cosmic-fear-or-the-day-brad-pitt-got-paranoia

Symptoms of schizophrenia: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Schizophrenia/Pages/Symptoms.aspx

On Paul Verlaine: http://www.rosings.com/paul_verlaine.html

On impact of climate change on mental health: http://grist.org/climate-energy/what-is-climate-change-doing-to-our-mental-health/

DOUBTING THOMAS // Grassmarket Projects

Doubting Thomas is ostensibly about Glasgow's criminal underworld, but it's also about the consequences of childhood trauma and neglect, and it's about rehabilitation. Written and performed by Thomas McCrudden with support from the cast, it is the true story of his violent past, detailing his time both in and out of prison.

As well as reenacting scenes from his life, McCrudden explores the roots of his offending, investigating how and why someone might become criminally dispossessed. He says: 'When I was growing up I wasn’t shown love, and that created not just a man without a conscience or empathy. It created a monster.' He also talks about how he was always wearing a mask, and it was only when he found the courage to remove it that he was able to change.

McCrudden's stories of life in prison include descriptions of desperate young men unable to read or write, and several bloody suicide attempts. In Doubting Thomas, prison is not a place where people are empowered to turn their lives around; it is a place of violence and fear, full of young men let down by mainstream education who have found the only way they can prove themselves is through crime.

Research by the University of Strathclyde's Interventions for Vulnerable Youth service has explored the links between childhood trauma and offending. Consultant Clinical and Forensic Psychologist Dr Lorraine Johnston says: 'We see some children dismissed as attention seeking or manipulative. But 75-85 per cent of them have significant histories of trauma. Understanding their behaviour as a response to that can be the key.'

The Grassmarket Project was founded in 1990 by Artistic Director Jeremy Weller, who focuses on putting real life stories on stage. There is often only one professional actor in the cast, with the rest of the parts played by the people who actually experienced them. The act of creating and performing the play is a kind of catharsis, a way to confront one's demons and potentially move on. Doubting Thomas is performance as rehab. (HB)

Doubting Thomas is on at Summerhall (venue 26) at 19:20 until 28 August: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/doubting-thomas

'Mental Health and Prisons': http://www.who.int/mental_health/policy/mh_in_prison.pdf

'Prison is not working – it’s time for a rehabilitation revolution': http://www.halsburyslawexchange.co.uk/prison-is-not-working-its-time-for-a-rehabilitation-revolution/

'Domestic violence a trigger for three quarters of violent young offenders': http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/14329830.Domestic_violence_a_trigger_for_three_quarters_of_violent_young_offenders/

'Understanding the Cycle, Childhood Maltreatment and Future Crime': https://www.princeton.edu/~jcurrie/publications/Understanding%20the%20CycleChildhood.pdf

Positive Prison, Positive Futures: http://www.positiveprison.org

Prison Reform Trust: http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk

The Howard League for Penal Reform: http://howardleague.org

HOT BROWN HONEY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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