MONOLOGUES OF A TIRED NURSE // Theatre for Thought

Stress-related mental health problems affect one in five primary care workers. Four in five have trouble sleeping. These are the realities of working in today’s NHS, according to mental health research by Mind, and they form the backdrop to Monologues of a Tired Nurse.

Two nurses step onto the stage, one an optimistic new recruit, Emily, and the other a battle-hardened and exhausted nurse-in-charge called Sally. Among the paraphernalia and body fluids of a normal day, a harrowing story unfolds, the characters’ interconnecting soliloquies showing how the most compassionate individuals can become casualties of an undoable job.

Sally says she came into nursing with a Superman complex, but soon realised there was no time to care. She feels broken – that she isn’t good or worthy, and is angry with people who say nurses are saints.

Emily is hopeful, almost angelic, but struggles to gain professional confidence. Sally’s attempts to toughen her up only seems to make things worse. Emily blames herself for the mistakes she makes under pressure, and sees the coping mechanisms she develops as inevitable.

Monologues is written by Stephanie Silver, who worked for eight years as a paediatric nurse and plays the hardbitten Sally. Her insider’s perspective shows a health service in which shortages have a direct impact on both patients and carers, and where the scrutiny of box-ticking bosses takes priority over the humanity of staff.

It's the issue of putting a brave face on things, and continuing under grinding levels of stress, that this play really addresses. Emily, lost in issues of her past and present, eventually leaves a note for Sally and takes her own life.

Mind’s research shows that one in three healthcare workers would never talk about their stress for fear of being seen as less capable - less able to take the heat of an NHS essentially on fire. Monologues starkly shows us the future we are facing if we are not prepared to care for those who work on the frontline of caring for us.

- Rebecca Mileham

Monologues of a Tired Nurse ran at theSpace @ Surgeon's Hall until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/monologues-of-a-tired-nurse

Mind’s 2016 survey into mental health in caring professions: http://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/mind-finds-worrying-levels-of-stress-among-primary-care-staff/#.V8b8vqI9p8o

NHS staff cuts and reduction in care quality ‘inevitable’, say King’s Fund: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/health/kings-fund-nhs-staffing-cuts-care-quality/

Student bursary cut 'may worsen NHS staff shortages': http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-36336830

Nursing Times article on a nurse's suicide being linked to work pressures: https://www.nursingtimes.net/walsall-nurses-suicide-linked-to-work-pressures-rules-coroner/1/5076937.article?sm=5076937

AND THE ROPE STILL TUGGING HER FEET // Caroline Burns Cooke

Abortion is still illegal in Ireland, as it was during 1984 when the Kerry Babies scandal raged forth from the intertwined powers of church and state. It was a cruel culmination of a logic that imposes shame on women’s bodies, on their sexual activity whilst excusing men, and on their ability to choose to not follow through with an unwanted pregnancy. For all the difference between then and now, on the day that I saw And the Rope Still Tugging Her Feet, #TwoWomenTravel was trending. As Caroline Burns Cooke (the writer and performer of the monologue) recounted the story of the young woman at the centre of the 1984 scandal, two other young women were, in 2016, sharing their story of having to travel from Ireland to the UK in order to secure a safe and legal abortion.
 
Organisations in Ireland and elsewhere are still struggling to reverse the regressive policies that force women from their home countries in search of help, or into back-alley alternatives. Art and performance can have a powerful impact on public conversation, and the direct action of groups like Speaking of I.M.E.L.D.A (Ireland Making England the Legal Destination for Abortion) contributes to a gathering clamour around the repeal of the 8th amendment to the Irish constitution, which prohibits safe options for women. Even the UN has ruled that Ireland must provide “accessible procedures for pregnancy termination” in order to avoid impinging on the human rights of its citizens. Even the Irish Minister for Health thanked the two women who tweeted their journey for highlighting the debate, although time will tell what difference it might make. In a worrying sign of the global polarity of the argument, the vile American blogger Courtney Kirchoff has already decried their documentation of the journey.
 
As a piece of theatre, the performance is a dissection of a historical abuse of power and victimisation of a young woman devoid of options. But it has resonance now, as a precursor to the ongoing battle to secure safe choices for women, in Ireland and around the world.

- Lewis Church

And The Rope Still Tugging Her Feet ran at Gilded Balloon Teviot until August 29th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/and-the-rope-still-tugging-her-feet

The Kerry Babies Case: http://www.thejournal.ie/kerry-babies-case-30-years-on-1413918-Apr2014/
 
#TwoWomenTravel: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-37156673
 
Speaking of I.M.E.L.D.A (Direct Action Group): https://twitter.com/speakofIMELDA
 
UN Ruling on Irish Human Rights Violations: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/09/ireland-abortion-laws-violated-human-rights-says-un
 
Courtney KirchoffSends Open Letter: http://irishpost.co.uk/american-novelist-slams-pro-choice-campaigners-two-women-travel-scathing-blog-post/

THE ME // Sun Apparatus Theatre Company

On Saturday the 27th of August 2016, it was confirmed that Mbah Gotho was the oldest person in the world, after he produced documentation that proved he was born on the 31st of December 1870. When Gotho was born (145 years ago) Ulysses S. Grant was the President of the United States, Italy was being unified, and Charles Dickens had just died. Indonesia, the country of his birth, was a Dutch colony. He would have been 74 when World War 2 ended, and is still living now.
 
The ME is about ageing, and the quest for longevity. It’s about the very human desire to resist death and the value of the one life you’ll get to lead before it’s snuffed out. Its protagonists are chasing immortality and the promise of experiencing the span of history Gotho has. It’s a gentle satire of wellness and pseudo-science, of new-age fixation and hollow self-improvement. Melody, the insufferable character at the centre of the story abuses her maid Lita as she joylessly swigs kombucha, seaweed health drinks or whatever else, before an absurd sequence of events introduces her to an unhinged researcher of how-to-cheat-death. This scientist of dubious ethics makes vague references to planarian worms, a sci-fi trope found in everything from Star Trek to Swamp Thing to denote unknowable potential for regeneration. Her crazed experiments are vaguely reminiscent of Serge Voronoff’s monkey-testicle grafts, the Russian scientist whose placebo experiments later inspired the vicious revolutionary critique of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog. Like many other plays, films and books, The ME suggests a denial of mortality is the dark underside of medical science.
 
The world will change and leave us behind. By the time death comes it might be greeted without fear, as the world we find ourselves in has changed beyond all recognition. A long life is not the same as a good one, as the characters in The ME discover. Who knows how the world will develop as we age? Might it end, or continue to change? During the still continuing life of Mbah Gotho the telephone went from a new invention to a ubiquitous tool. He was alive before the first petrol engine was created. None of us know how long we have, or what we might see.

- Lewis Church

The ME ran at ZOO until August 28th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/me

The Sun Apparatus Theatre Company: http://www.thesunapparatus.com
 
Oldest Person in the World - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/worlds-oldest-person-man-mbah-gotho-indonesia-145-years-old-a7213191.html
 
Planarian Worms: https://www.exploratorium.edu/imaging_station/research/planaria/story_planaria.pdf
 
Regrowing Heads and Keeping Memories: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/16/decapitated-worms-regrow-heads-keep-old-memories/
 
Serge Voronoff: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-true-story-of-dr-voronoffs-plan-to-use-monkey-testicles-to-make-us-immortal
 
What the World Might Look Like in 100 Years: http://www.realclearlife.com/2016/09/01/this-is-what-the-world-might-look-like-in-100-years/

LIFTED // Triad Pictures

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

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

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

- Lucy Orr

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

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

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

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

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

INFINITY POOL // Bea Roberts

“Poor little woman – she is gaping after love like a carp on a kitchen table.”

Emma Barnicott’s life bares many parallels to Emma Bovary’s. Gustave Flaubert’s enduring narrative on adultery, Madame Bovary, is here revisited as an exploration of the role of social media in modern relationships. Bea Roberts' performance has no actors but with the use of a TV, a soundboard, several projectors, an animated PowerPoint Presentation and a variety of physical props, she draws us into an immersive performance.

Emma Barnicott’s life is banal and empty; the daily commute, the microwave dinners and sexless marriage are a painful routine. Emma works in a bathroom fitting company and when asked to man the company’s online help desk, an exchange of emails and a complaint about pipes leads to a virtual romance.

With the ongoing Anthony Weiner sexting scandals leading the news going into the upcoming US elections, it’s easy to see how even those in influential political positions can succumb to the exhilaration and seduction of a simulated relationship. The ability to develop an online augmented alter ego, as Emma does, can become totally absorbing and be a welcome distraction from the trivialities of daily life. Emma’s affair never transcends cyberspace and unlike Sharon Osborne, who recently threatened Ozzy with divorce on finding a slew of amorous emails, her real life relationships are thankfully never affected.

Bea Roberts' show considers the ease with which sexting and technology lubricate virtual betrayal. The loss of sexual intimacy seems inherent in the progression of technology. Bea Roberts addresses how even the most humdrum life can be affected by the evolution of online relationships. In a world of ghosting and negging with no chance for the brain to assess body language or any other sensory information, any perception of tenderness and affection in an online relationship may be distorted or imaginary. (LO)

Infinity Pool: A Modern Retelling of Madame Bovary ran at 16.45 at Bedlam Theatre (Venue 49) - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/infinity-pool-a-modern-retelling-of-madame-bovary

Is Texting or Sexting Cheating?: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/getting-back-out-there/201511/is-texting-or-sexting-cheating

A Look Inside The Insidious And Adulterous World Of Sexting: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/02/sexting-cheating_n_6185288.html

The Toll Sexting Takes on Marriage - Divorce Help: http://divorcehelp360.com/the-toll-sexting-takes-on-marriage/

THE CONVOLUTION OF PIP AND TWIG // PEP

Cryptophasia is the phenomenon of a language developed by twins. At the start of The Convolution of Pip and Twig the consistent, unintelligible muttering suggest these two are among the 50% of twins who have created their personal idioglossia; an idiosyncratic and essentially private language invented and spoken by only a couple of people.

Kara McLane Burke and Siân Richards humble us with an intimate gentle performance that waxes and wanes like the cardboard moon above the stage. Playing identical sisters they transport us to their world, somewhere between Mr. Ben and Rainbow - a childish hedonistic utopia.

After waking entangled from sleep, they dance and complete chores in synchronisation, until Twig is seduced by the moon and slopes off only to be pursued by her sister/twin into the night and the ocean. Clownlike performance and playful physical theatre is complemented by a handmade set: the ocean is enthralling and helps to disperse the overwhelming sense of separation anxiety whenever the two characters are apart. Research shows emotional attachment in twins can become unhealthy with a loss of individualism; this is almost palpable to the audience who feel a genuine philological sense of disconnection when Pip and Twig are apart.

This summer, BBC’s Horizon My Amazing Twin explored the genetic condition neurofibromatosis type 1 and the different effect it had on a set of identical twins, encouraging a discourse around the research studying the differing genetics of identical twins. The Convolution of Pip and Twig explores the twin’s relationship through repetition, as if they are conscious of their intertwined and indistinguishable DNA.

- Lucy Orr

The Convolution of Pip and Twig  ran at 18.40 at SpaceTriplex (Venue 38) until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/convolution-of-pip-and-twig

The Lone Twin: How to Deal With Twin Separation Anxiety: https://healdove.com/mental-health/The-Lone-Twin-How-to-Deal-With-Twin-Separation-Anxiety

Twintuition: Ezra and Adeev Potash at TEDxOmaha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDLoOrdhfAw

Identically Different: Tim Spector at TEDxKingsCollegeLondon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W5SeBYERNI

Becoming a twin... at age 23: Georgy Cohen at TEDxSomerville: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxHCYSOtLyI

1 Language That Only 2 People Speak: The Secret Language Of Twins: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/twins-secret-languages

MAKING MONSTERS // The Golden Fire Theatre Company

The sexism that Mary Shelley experienced while trying to write literary classic Frankenstein is unfortunately still an immediate and modern concern as literary award shortlists continue to be male dominated. Making Monsters does its best to explore the feminist context surrounding the creation of this psychologically gripping, and essentially modern landmark text.

As the performance starts we are transported to Geneva, where sycophants gather around literary giant and romantic Victorian wide boy Lord Byron. Mary Shelly, Claire Clairmont and Percy Bysshe Shelley along with Byron himself convinced themselves to interrupt the boredom they will compete in a literary challenge: to conceive a horror story.

The male characters are larger than life as Mary and Claire are instantly sidelined; a reflection of the recent discussion surrounding male dominated contemporary literally criticism and awards. Dismissed and belittled by Byron, Mary is not to be banished and slowly she cultivates her ghastly narrative.

Mary’s mother was Mary Woolstonecraft, the writer of A Vindication on the Rights of Woman and references to her writing act as a stepping stone to connect the themes to contemporary feminist discourse. While assessing Claire's stitching, Mary mumbles about body parts and voltage, forehead creased, considering the fear of the promethean monstrosity her mind is creating - born of dangerous knowledge and symbolic of secretive scientific endeavor. Instead of the female anatomy being created from Adam's spare rib, it is Mary, a woman, creating this twisted masculine form. News of the first human head transplant being performed in Russia this year and the ethical minefield this kind of surgery inspires, suggest Mary Shelly might be the mother of modern medical ethics.

Mary Shelly’s writing was a primal manifestation of Fuck the Patriarchy. Manarchists and brocialists -  Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, the sexist radicals of their day -  just couldn’t compete.

- Lucy Orr

Making Monsters ran at 17.05 at theSpace @ Surgeons Hall (Venue 53) until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/making-monsters

Sexism in publishing: 'My novel wasn’t the problem, it was me, Catherine': https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/06/catherine-nichols-female-author-male-pseudonym

The Deep Rooted Sexism In Literary Awards: https://thinkprogress.org/the-deep-rooted-sexism-in-literary-awards-9b4f49c7f9e3#.14cmjvy9p

Publishing and Prejudice: 5 Female Writers Weigh in on Sexism in the Literary World: http://brooklynbased.com/blog/2013/11/15/publishing-and-prejudice-5-female-writers-weigh-in-on-sexism-in-the-literary-world/

The Ethics of Organ Transplantation: A Brief History: http://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/2012/03/mhst1-1203.html

A year after face transplant, man says he is 'feeling great' – video: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/aug/24/face-transplant-patrick-hardison-video

SWEET CHILD OF MINE // Bron Batten

While Bron Batten’s performance of Sweet Child of Mine (seemingly) did not seek to directly explore ideas of ageing and care; making the piece with her father led to an additional layer of performance gently weaving itself in. In this piece, the lines between Bron’s relationship to her parents on and off stage begin to blur.

In the piece, the artist interviews her parents about what they imagine she does for a living. This projected, hardly edited, documentary-like footage of Batten’s conversations with her parents gets us to think about art and performance. What are they for? Who might they be aimed at? What’s the point of it all?

For Bron Batten, those questions led to her making and touring a performance with her father for the last five years. Performance becomes a way of finding out more about each other, and of opening out a conversation across generations and on both sides of the fourth wall.

This, however is not the performance that was presented during this Edinburgh Fringe. Not quite. Due to an unforeseen illness, Bron Batten’s father, James has been unable to travel to Scotland to perform the show with his daughter.

With ten days to go until the start of the festival, Batten sought support from the local arts community to recruit local dads to stand in for her own.

Beyond the comment and gentle satire of contemporary art, James Batten’s absence - and his daughter’s decision* that ‘the show must go on’ - bring an additional signifying layer to the piece. Indeed, with life expectancy having significantly increased in recent decades, most people currently enjoy longer adult relationships with their parents. As these relationships evolve over time, carer/cared for dynamics shift. In Sweet Child of Mine, Bron Batten is now ‘orphaned’ on stage, and beyond the theatrical framework, we become aware that she will soon become a carer to her ageing parents.

Elsewhere, in Joanna Griffin’s Bricking It, while her father Patrick is indeed present on stage with her, the absence felt is that of their mother and wife whose death prompted the making of the piece, during which Griffin jokingly asserts; “it’s cheaper to bring my dad on stage with me than to put him in a care home”.

A few Fringes ago, Simon Bowes took to the stage with his father in a poetic exploration of the passing of time, with his mother watching from the front row, prepared with cue cards for her husband. A whole family present, but the disappearing of memories and the perceived increase in the speed of time passing.

Opening up their personal relationships to their makers’ families, each of those performances invites us to consider and re-define how we might choose to age, and manage ageing alongside our kin.

- Leo Burtin

* It feels important to note that the performance itself doesn’t inform us as to whether the decision to adapt the performance to accommodate James Batten’s absence was artistically driven or purely circumstantial.

Sweet Child of Mine ran at Gilded Balloon Teviot until August 29th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/sweet-child-of-mine

Journal of Marriage & Family article on intergenerational bonds: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.00001.x/full

Annual Review of Sociology article on intergenerational family relations in adulthood: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27800075?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Bron Batten’s website: https://bronbatten.com/

Information on Bricking It: https://making-room.co.uk/portfolio/bricking-it/

Information on Kings of England’s Where We Live & What We Live For featuring Simon Bowes and his father: http://kingsofengland.tumblr.com/WWL&WWLF

TWO MAN SHOW // RashDash

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

- Dr Kat Arney

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

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

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

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

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

TELL ME ANYTHING // David Ralfe

Tell Me Anything delivers a refreshing and profound take on the enduring discourse surrounding mental illness. The narrative focuses on performer David Ralfe and flashes back to his relationship with Kate, his girlfriend at 15 years old. Diagnosed as atypically anorexic, Kate is physically absent from the story, as we are led to believe she, and many like her, try to become physically absent from reality, by starving themselves. As 'Thinspiration' becomes a pre-pubescent lifestyle choice it’s impossible to avoid this epidemic of female self-harm. Watching the recent Netflix phenomena Stranger Things, it seemed terrifyingly unsurprising there is a Proana discussion devoted to the unnaturally thin Natalia Dyer.

David is tormented by Kate’s illness and its profound effect on their relationship. With a Dolphin strapped to his back he recites the mantra Warmth, Guidance, Gentle Nudging as a coping strategy to help him thought the lies and vomit scented snogging. Young love beset by constant struggle ultimately takes its toll on David and our honest and reliable narrator reveals his present mental health struggles.

Kate's parents are uninterested and like Joan Bakewell’s recent controversial and unhelpful statement, infer that anorexia is fundamentally narcissism. This leaves the burden of support on an increasingly unstable David: we feel his instability as he physically stumbles through a small collection of cardboard tubes. He grasps at them as they fall over and he tries to fix them, just like he is trying to fix Kate, to save her from herself.

NHS Mental Health funding is bound to suffer no matter what was written on the Brexit battle bus, there are no quick solutions to the rise of the mental health crisis brought on by years of austerity but Tell Me Anything manages to engage the audience with determination and commitment.

- Lucy Orr

Tell Me Anything is on at 17.45 at Summerhall (Venue 26) until August 28th. See venue for Accessibility information, Suitability: 14+ (Guideline). https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/tell-me-anything 

NHS mental health funding is still lagging behind, says report: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/09/nhs-mental-health-funding-is-still-lagging-behind-says-report

My Battle With Anorexia | Dave Chawner | TEDxClapham: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqbL-UhhyPk

Eating Disorders from the Inside Out: Laura Hill at TEDxColumbus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEysOExcwrE

Ruby Wax:What's so funny about mental illness?: https://www.ted.com/talks/ruby_wax_what_s_so_funny_about_mental_illness

(I COULD GO ON SINGING) SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW // FK Alexander

The volume of this work is at the level of trembling clothes. An affective noise that moves bodies and governs the internal rhythms of an audience to match its ritual of dialogue balladry. The singer is standing in a washed-out strobe aurora with a mic lead coiled in her punk rock grip, hand-in-hand with one from the crowd. The crowd let it lull them into a meditative state.

Noise is often a subtle charming of our unconscious reactions, whether the drip-drip of an irritating tap or the hollow roar of a train-journey tunnel. It holds and releases insides and surface, quivering and dimpling and pushing you back, fading into the background with time but rearranging you as you stand. It bathes and heals and envelops your stresses, leeching it back through vibrations that heal. FK Alexander enters into eye-contracts of healing interaction flanked by the two noisy sentinels of her co-performers. For an hour after entering you stand, sit or shuffle in the space at the limit of aural endurance, until leaving into the shocking quiet. It’s sound as a weapon targeting isolation, and sound as a healing force, bridging bodies in the room.

The work is a cover version of a performance moment, a reinterpretation of a numbingly repeated song to convey the hurt and poignance of the final performance of an aging star. Clattering drums and odd discordance augment the familiar Hollywood build to a transcendent moment of cathartic release. The formality of dressing, undressing, and holding hands acts out a serenade as an engagement. When Judy Garland died of an overdose of barbiturates in 1969 it was an overstimulation to the point of limit. The noise here is an overstimulation, but one that heals as much as that other destroyed. (LC)

(I Could Go On Singing) Over The Rainbow ran at Summerhall Basement until August 28th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/i-could-go-on-singing-over-the-rainbow

FK Alexander: https://www.artsadmin.co.uk/artists/fk-alexander

A History of Using Sound as a Weapon: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-history-of-using-sound-as-a-weapon

Sound Healing: http://qz.com/595315/turns-out-sound-healing-can-be-actually-well-healing/

Come On, Feel the Noise (Paul Hegarty): https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/nov/10/squarepusher-paul-hegarty-noise

Clip of Judy Garland’s Final Television Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJhHPTBjzac

The Second Summer of Hate: Noise Rock Now (The Quietus): http://thequietus.com/articles/19966-noise-rock-2016-reviews

Okishima Island Tourist Association Shoot: http://www.kovoroxsound.com/OKISHIMA%20ISLAND%20TOURIST%20ASSOCIATION%20-%20SHOOT.html

I AM NOT A CHILD // Dale vN Marshall

As the wall text of this exhibition acknowledges, the graffiti practiced on the streets of Bath and Bristol by Dale vN Marshall preceded his sectioning in the Cornwall County Asylum in 1999, but the event exerts a continuing resonance on his practice of art. His spray-paint work on the walls of public spaces transferred to private galleries and international museums as a gallery artist, but maintains its still-street aesthetic. In this exhibition at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, Marshall has drawn on his own experiences as a young person in the mental health system to produce the paintings, as well as on a series of conversations and workshops with young people in Edinburgh dealing with ADHD, autism and circumstantial trauma facilitated by drama programs and community organisations. 

These young people face immense difficulties just being young now, as the social contract of ever increasing living standards promised by previous generations frays around the edges. Diagnoses of mental ill health amongst young people have skyrocketed, and when one in ten young people between five and sixteen years are struggling, it is worth acknowledging that it might also be due to the pressures of life that impinge on their development. The world intrudes on the stability of those starting to establish themselves. These dense bands of highlighter colours that drip and trail from the canvases on display in Marshall’s work include harshly scrawled statements of neglect and despair from his young workshop participants. “I’m sick of people telling me who I am and who I should be” and “Give us a voice and we will be heard” bracket the abstract shapes and colour fields. Parental pressures, support, work and education deficiencies, digital expectation and the pressures of neoliberalism on families mount up to a difficult-at-best process of learning to live. Through working with artists, and becoming artists themselves, young people have a space for expression and engagement separate from the social imperative not to learn what is not directly applicable to later life. Street art is an intervention into public space, just as art can be an intervention into the development of good mental health.

- Lewis Church

The Acting Scene (Edinburgh based Drama Company) – http://theactingscene.co.uk/

Mental Health Statistics (Young Minds) - http://www.youngminds.org.uk/training_services/policy/mental_health_statistics
 
Supporting Young People’s Health and Wellbeing (Scottish Government Policy Summary) –
http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0041/00418332.pdf
 
Street Art News - https://streetartnews.net
 
Dale vN Marshall Q&A – http://www.tracscotland.org/scottish-storytelling-centre/news/qa-dale-vn-marshall

FAT GIRLS DON'T DANCE // Maria Ferguson

There's some crunk dance moves happening in Maria Ferguson’s first one woman show, Fat Girls Don’t Dance, it’s an autobiographical account of her struggles with food and body image and how this has affected her dreams of becoming a professional dancer.

Stuck in a job cold calling for Which magazine Maria is day dreaming of supplying the dance floor with some sick moves. She sings "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid as if a plea for inclusion to the world of performance.

There’s more sick moves when Maria gets home but these involve vomit, as the audience witnesses her battling with her eating disorder, obsessive exercise and calorie counting. Like every thinspiration instagram post she contorts till her collar bones protrude and runs desperately as if searching for that ever elusive thigh gap, her brows knit with determination or maybe confusion as the Meghan Trainor song "All About the Bass" resounds across the stage, a positive body image and self-acceptance anthem which entreats her to embrace herself at any size.

A beloved but expensive dance class involves tap, ballet and modern but also French Fancies, Custard Creams and wotsits. Through repetition and Tourettes-like physical tics, Maria describes her auditions, which are always met with a mantra of “too fat to play pretty, too pretty to play fat.” Maria is caught in a mental and physical loop of auditions for the indistinguishable female performer’s holy trinity of Holby City, Casualty, Eastenders.

Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon" is Maria’s Bulimia musical touchstone, a song to be sung so she recognises dangerous behaviors, but also to comfort shattered dreams and the painful daily realities and challenges of bingeing and purging.

When even record breaking Olympian Simone Biles suffers body shaming, the challenges of maintaining a positive body image seem insurmountable to most women. Fat Girls Don’t Dance is a touching, brave and at times uncomfortably honest performance that entreats the audience to challenges the impossible aesthetic of professional dancers.

- Lucy Orr

Fat Girls Don’t Dance is on at 14.50 at Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) Hearing Loop. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/fat-girls-don-t-dance

Stripping away negative body image | Lillian Bustle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME-c0l8oTkY

Proof That You Can Be A Wildly Talented Dancer At Any Size http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/05/fat-girl-dancing-video-talk-dirty-to-me_n_4730408.html

Girls with anorexia turned away by NHS because they are 'not thin enough' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/03/girls-with-anorexia-turned-away-by-nhs-because-not-thin-enough/

A resource for professionals and carers of people with eating disorders http://www.thenewmaudsleyapproach.co.uk/

1 LAST DANCE WITH MY FATHER // Njambi McGrath

It's not just African AIDS statistics that Njambi McGrath carries around with her; she bears the generational physical and mental scars of Kenya’s colonial past. Teresa Mays recent political wrangling to scrape The Human Rights Act seem unsurprising when Njambi offers an African’s insight into the systematic extermination of the populations of Kenya and DRC by European Imperialists. It's the West's inability to see the hypocrisy in lecturing Africa Nations on human rights that has recently led to Gambia withdrawing from The Commonwealth.

Njambi manages to cover a diverse and vast range of topics during her hour on stage including The Wealth Divide, Donald Trump’s seemingly imminent Mexican wall, Oscar Pretorius and Guantanamo Bay. But all these topics are used as humorous asides to her starling account of surviving her father’s emotional and physical abuse. Njambi makes light of his regular brutalities as she strays from current events into autobiographical territory. She stresses her father was surely a feminist as he maintained all females should obtain a good education but then describes how he beat her to unconsciousness after learning she had an abortion.

1 Last Dance with My father is a story of survival, on first impression Njambi’s survival of her father, but as the narrative progresses we learn that Njambi’s father was an orphan of a Kenyan resettlement camp, found suckling the teat of his dead mother. His death begins a journey of understanding and forgiveness, a personal parallel to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Njambi challenges our perceptions of Africa and its people while maintaining a western discourse on current political events such as The Brexit and even manages to get a gasp from the audience on suggesting that Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai is probably a cunt.

- Lucy Orr

1 Last Dance with My father is on at 14.30 at Laughing Horse @ Espionage (Venue 185) until August 27th. Wheelchair Accessible Toilets.https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/1-last-dance-with-my-father

Mau Mau uprising: Kenyans still waiting for justice join class action over Britain's role in the emergency -Thousands of elderly people claim mistreatment, rape and torture by colonial forces http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/mau-mau-uprising-kenyans-still-waiting-for-justice-join-class-action-over-britains-role-in-the-9877808.html

Domestic violence is biggest threat to west Africa's women, IRC says https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2012/may/22/domestic-violence-west-africa-irc

Leslie Dodson: Don’t misrepresent Africa https://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_dodson_don_t_misrepresent_africa

4D CINEMA // Mamoru Iriguchi

Mamoru Iriguchi’s moving planes of flat projection are a visual signature, a recurring technique constructed through a wacky series of contraptions that disguise their sophistication. In 4D Cinema the footage projected onto them are used to question time itself, the ability of a subject to define their own home and the biographic responsibilities of the performer and audience. The nature of memory is as much its subject as Marlene Dietrich, both in what the audience remember of themselves as they were fifty minutes younger, and in thoughts of how your memory will survive after death.

It is apt that this questioning of memory happens through a screen. There is constant media speculation on the consequences of modern humanity’s deferral of the responsibility of remembering onto external devices. No longer do our brains contain sets of memorised phone numbers or addresses, they're filed away as discrete pieces of digital information accessed through a screen or a cloud. Iriguchi’s work highlights the risk that this trust of the screen might come to dominate our own memories. Believable biographical material is delivered through screen and authoritative speech, causing a brief cognitive dissonance with my vaguely recalled pop cultural history. Was what was said about Dietrich true, whether played forwards or back? Can I trust my disbelief without a surreptitious Google?

As the performance finishes, the last thing the audience see is themselves reversed in moving image, a playback of themselves entering unaware into the space. It’s a riff on self-perception and its communication, on the marketing of ourselves as a central concern, the modus operandi of social media and advertising, subcultures, clothing and rep. Like the mirror stage of Lacanian psychoanalysis, the point at which a toddler locates themselves in the image in the mirror, video documentation shows the subject to itself as something others see. In 4D Cinema our image is reflected back to a later version of ourselves, through an unaware entrance, and the ramblings of a reticent historical subject.

- LC

Mamoru Iriguchi - http://www.iriguchi.co.uk/About.html

How the Internet Inhibits Short-Term Memory -http://www.medicaldaily.com/information-overload-how-internet-inhibits-short-term-memory-257580

Digital Amnesia: Real or Not? -http://www.techtimes.com/articles/65431/20150709/digital-amnesia-spreading-due-to-internet-and-smartphone-use-or-crass-marketing-ploy.htm

Metaperceptions: How Do You See Yourself? -https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200505/metaperceptions-how-do-you-see-yourself

The Mirror Stage –http://www.lacanonline.com/index/2010/09/what-does-lacan-say-about-the-mirror-stage-part-i/

Mamoru Iriguchi/Lewis Church Interview (Exeunt) - http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/between-the-genres/

DIARY OF A MADMAN // Gate Theatre

Adapted from Nikolai Gogol’s short story of the same name, Al Smith re-sets Diary of A Madman in contemporary Scotland. The main protagonist, Pop Sheeran makes his living from the inherited trade of restoring Forth Rail Bridge. It takes him a whole year to complete the repainting, by which time he is ready to start over again. 

Sheeran is proud of this family heritage, which he is keen to see continue, as we understand his eldest son, Henry, used to work with his father. Henry is not physically present at any moment in the play, we know early on that he is “unwell”. 

Filling in for Henry in his absence is new recruit Matt White (sic), a research student in material sciences, sent by the University of Edinburgh to test a new kind of paint, designed to last over 50 years. As Matt and Pop’s daughter Sophie start to develop romantic interests in each other, a conversation between White and Sheeran begins to shed light on Henry’s absence.

Sheeran refers to an unnamed hereditary condition for which his son is hospitalised, and tells White that his own condition is managed with medication. 

The play’s pace accelerates proportionally to Sheeran’s “descent into madness” as he fears White’s feelings for his daughter will make the newcomer the “man of the house” and that the buying of the bridge by a Qatari company was in fact engineered by the young Englishman, marking the beginning of a new conflict between the two countries.

Not yet clearly diagnosed, Sheeran’s conversations and developing relationship with a soft toy puppet of Greyfriar’s puppy, as well as his increased obsession with his relationship to William Wallace, suggests that he may have been living with a form of schizophrenia. Sheeran ends the play (before his hospitalisation), being Wallace himself, also pointing to the literary rich Histrionic Personality Disorder. 

Beyond the piece’s staging of madness, and the possible triggers to moments of crisis, Haydon’s take on Smith’s play clearly points to how socioeconomic background affects our experiences of mental ill-health. For the Sheeran family, this hereditary ill health is tangled in nationalism, class and their role on the global market.

- Leo Burtin

Diary of a Madman is on at the Traverse Theatre at various times until August 28th. Wheelchair Access, Level Access - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/diary-of-a-madman-1 

Free (public domain) Diary of A Madman by Gogol: http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6464/diary-of-a-madman

University of Cambridge research article exploring the relationship between social class, mental health stigma and mental health literacy: http://hea.sagepub.com/content/19/4/413

American Public Health Journal article on unemployment and mental health: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.94.1.82

American Psychological Association article on Histrionic Personality Disorder: http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2007-00410-008

HERO WORSHIP // Sonic Boom

Hero Worship deals with comics as a coping mechanism and is the latest in a series of monologues by admired writer-performer Kenny Boyle. Cyberpunk clothing and a utility belt are instantly familiar from the comic Kick Ass as is our hero, a 21st century everyman working in a SUPERmarket. His main enemies are probably familiar to all of us and go by the names of anxiety, depression and uncertainty.  Using imagination to escape the mundane is a central theme in hero Worship but it’s stressed, that the complexities of real life are what make us who we are and build our personalities. Boyle reiterates though out the performance that it’s everyday moral choices such as caring for an animal or falling in love that make us truly powerful. 

Just like Batman and Superman our hero is an orphan and troubled by childhood loss. By becoming The Flash he suggests his imagination lets him run so fast, that death and pain become insignificant. Boyle uses spoken word filled with rhyming references to a vast comic universe to transcend reality, but this doesn’t stop him bringing us violently down to earth with a powerful description of a physical attack.

During the performance Boyle points to members of the audience and assigns them powers: these aren’t telekinesis or invisibility, but empathy and commonsense. Hero Worship consistently asserts that men in tights and robot fights can do wonders to bolster self-confidence and self-awareness.

Comics preserve the tradition of visual storytelling vital to humanity. More recently, they have become a literary platform that pushes traditional narrative boundaries by addressing a whole spectrum of physical and mental health issues, ranging from body shaming and feminism to LGBT rights. These days graphic novels have a lot to say. At the end of the performance when our hero is unmasked and the therapy is complete. He has escaped the escapism and been assured by his new found love that she didn’t need saving; just for him to be there, a partner in life’s daily fight.

To be continued…(LO)

Hero Worship is on at 13.30 at C venues – C (Venue 34) until August 29th. Wheelchair Access, Level Access -https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/hero-worship

 Welcome to Bitch Planet - the comic that's reimagining feminism: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/06/bitch-planet-comic-feminism

The Rise of Superhero Therapy - Comic Books as Psychological Treatment: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/17/the-rise-of-superhero-therapy-comic-books-as-psychological-treatment.html

The effect of comic books on the ideology of children: http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ort/11/3/540/

The visual magic of comics - Scott McCloud: https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics?language=en