THREE JUMPERS // Unearthed Theatre

A council worker watches on as a young man takes a running jump to throw himself off a bridge. He pulls back at the last moment. The young man, elegantly dressed, starts to converse with the dry witted street sweeper and the tone shifts. Things are revealed to be more complicated, as things often are.

Soon we are joined by two others and a queue forms at the bridge. A queue of suicides. They start to squabble and confer and details start to drip down to form a patchwork of connections. Unemployment, childlessness, the absence or death of love. The mutual connection through one female character.

Three Jumpers treats suicide as something more than just a one-off kind of ultimate madness, or a sudden burst towards self-annihilation. It shows the sometimes farcical, even grimly humorous faces of self-loathing and depression. It’s all in the conversation- after all, isn’t the absence of dialogue, the feeling that internal suffering is something to be born stoically and alone, that one of the biggest factors in suicide being the biggest killer of young men. It’s not that the conversations are flawless. They are often stilted and spiteful, yet strangely fluent in the way that desperate peoples conversations often are.

The play unfurls like a morality play without a moralising streak. Through its humor and subtlety it shows suicidal tendencies not as aberrations, but part of the complexity that constitutes being human.

- FG

Three Jumpers played at Greenside @ Infirmary Street - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/three-jumpers

Self-Determination: A Buffer Against Suicide Ideation- http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2012-Bureau_SaLTB.pdf

From Beckett to Stoppard: Existentialism, Death, and Absurdity- http://home.sprintmail.com/~lifeform/beckstop.html

An Essay on Influence in Waiting for Godot- http://www.samuel-beckett.net/Penelope/influences_resonances.html

Campaign Against Living Miserably- https://www.thecalmzone.net/

GENERATION ZERO // Lamphouse Theatre

In a world increasingly mediated and sustained through ever more subtle technologies, it seems appropriate that the protagonists of Generation Zero meet through an online dating app. Their blossoming romance develops through a particular set of millennial anxieties and rituals. The strife at an unresponded message with a read receipt, the bonding over twee children's literature, the small unfoldings of mutual appreciations and desires.

But it’s precisely in the anxieties not shared and the concerns not reciprocated that creates the drama. One has deep ideological convictions about environmental activism. The other sees them as both distraction and oddity. The honeymoon harmony starts to wear off under the pressure of sincerity rubbing up against comfortable apathy.

While the play touches on the notional ideas of surveillance, the disruptive powers of technology and the sheer scale of damage humans wreak on their natural environment, it pales against the backdrop of a much more human scaled drama.

 Throughout, it’s the conversation regarding what it truly means to communicate with those you profess to love, with all of the minor, low-grade incomprehensions, the idea of speaking at, not to, the willful stuffing of ears against opposing viewpoints and the way these lead to all sorts of unmeant betrayals. The underlying irony is that what the audience hears is what the protagonists can’t, that all of the noise and concern that they treat each other and their various worthy causes is no substitute for actual communication.

- FG

Generation Zero played at ZOO Southside - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/generation-zero

Competitive effects of technology diffusion-  http://www.jstor.org/stable/1251581

The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism- https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1tCUQXgAJhoC&oi=fnd&pg=PP2&dq=environmental+activism+spying&ots=ed06eGOT8T&sig=SjLemW70cVLONo3d7bP80iDnR2I#v=onepage&q=environmental%20activism%20spying&f=false

Undercover police spied on activists- https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/09/undercover-uk-police-spy-apologises-after-being-tracked-down-by-woman-he-deceived

Womens Environment Network- http://www.wen.org.uk/

On the Social Media Ideology- http://www.e-flux.com/journal/on-the-social-media-ideology/

TRAVESTY // Fight in the Dog

Travesty is a play dealing with transitions. From one state of life to the next. Between innocence and ageing masquerading as experience. From a romantic relationships move from cradle to grave. From early 20s insouciance to the creeping fear that this might be all you’ve got. From dissatisfaction to, well, what exactly?

Both Lydia Larsen and Pierro Niel-Mee are two typical-ish archetypes. She- playing the older, acerbic, disillusioned (and male) teacher Ben- is full of a coiled tension hiding behind an aloofly ironic exterior. He- playing middle-class (and female) PR executive Anna- is full of easy first-flush of youth optimism. Their relationship is charted over four acts, from enraptured beginnings to fraught, bitter end.

It’s a play that creates a certain sense of frisson in the audience by subverting lazy gender norms, not by doing anything wildly radical, but by simply by inverting them. There’s the possessive slaps that Larsen gives Niel-Mee on the behind. There’s the shamed covering of the male, not female nipple. And then there’s the language.

What is ‘female’ language? For that matter, what is ‘male’ language? It’s not so much a question that’s taken up, but rather a set of cliched assumptions played out for comic effect. Anna, at points, both sly and circumlocutory and we’re invited to laugh at our smug assumptions because it’s coming out of a man's body. Ben is, at points, gruff and absurdly affected. Again, we are invited to laugh because it’s a set of language and gestures that we aren’t primed to ‘expect’ coming from a certain kind of body.

What keeps the work from merely reinforcing these stereotypes is that the writing is good enough to subtly acknowledge that we as an audience are having our own assumptions played with and teased out. Not only is Travesty a play explicitly dealing with all of the manifold day-to-day compromises we make to sustain, or break, relationships; it’s a play that forces you to acknowledge the compromises we make in communicating through our bodies and our imperfect language.

- FG

Travesty played at Assembly George Square Studios - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/travesty

A Short Introductory Essay on Judith Butler- http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm

How to Shake Up Gender Norms- http://time.com/3672297/future-gender-norms/ 

Performative Acts and Gender Constitution- http://facweb.northseattle.edu/mjacobson/SPECIAL%20TOPICS%20IN%20PSYCHOLOGY/Subjectivity/PerformativeActs.pdf

The Non-Verbal Semantics of Power & Gender- http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4612-5106-4_8#page-1

JOAN // Milk Presents

In ‘Mind, Modernity and Madness’, Liah Greenfeld writes that “A widely held idea (say, that hell awaits those who eat flesh on Fridays, or that all men are created equal) is no less a reality for people in the community holding the idea than the Atlantic Ocean”. Her bracingly forthright sociological study goes on to dismiss those who “diagnose entire cultures as psychotic...retroactively pronounce medieval saints schizophrenics”.

It’s a helpful thought to bear in mind when hearing the story of Joan of Arc. It’s a historical fact that a teenage peasant girl with no military background presided over a period of astonishing success for the French army in the 13th century -- while claiming to be taking directions from God. Accounts of the time stress her femininity, purity and delicacy, as a holy maiden who was literally heaven sent.

Lucy J. Skilbeck’s play makes her something a little tougher. Where medieval commentators were keen to emphasise that she only dressed as a man to preserve her chastity and safety, drag king LoUis CYfer embraces the masculinity of a woman who charged into battle in a specially made suit of armour.

Skilbeck’s focus on gender identity shows the power of religious zeal to overcome other culturally ingrained ideas, like the need for women to be meek and submissive. Medieval saints could (often literally) float over gender norms by dint of divine intervention. But medieval ideas on gender were also surprisingly modern: themes of gender transformation fill romances, while scientists believed that physical exercise, sexual desire or even just excessive heat could transform women into men. Skilbeck’s approach makes Joan’s approach both natural and deliberate: a series of tiny decisions, as well as one broad ecstatic creation. CYfer is an acclaimed performer on the drag cabaret scene, and this experience shows in a brilliant observed set of comic songs and physical performances. CYfer parodies all kinds of men, from a gruff father to a camp priest, and borrows their mannerisms: their self-consciousness heightened by the mirrors that surround the stage.

Joan becomes the world’s first drag king, a joyful anachronism heightened by CYfer’s Tank Girl t-shirt and 21st century song choices. Skilbeck’s story sticks close to its medieval source too, though, spelling out the painful details of victory in battle, then backlash from the religious establishment. In medieval times, as now, the freedom to step outside prescribed female roles is dependent on cultural mood. And when the mass shared belief in Joan’s divinity fades, so does Joan’s ability to perform a gender that’s artificial and hugely natural, at once.

- AS

Joan was on at Underbelly at Edinburgh Fringe, 5-28th August https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/joan

‘Mind, Modernity and Madness’ by Liah Greenfeld https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Le4anj8kJPkC&dq=medieval+saints+psychosis

Ideas of gender transformation in medieval fiction http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1813&context=mff

IT FOLDS // Junk Ensemble & Brokentalkers

At first, It Folds feels baffling, a blur whose beauty defies close analysis. It blurs the boundaries between life and death, making the ghosts of murdered children walk among their grieving families. It blurs the lines between truth and fiction, drawing on real-life stories of child abduction but muddying their details until they become universal. And most of all, it blurs the categories we place performance into. Its large cast mix dance, physical theatre, matter-of-fact monologues and disconcerting wit into a piece that creates a incense-heady atmosphere of its own.

Irish dance theatre company Junk Ensemble have collaborated with theatre-makers Brokentalkers to create It Folds. It has four directors, a nine-strong cast, and a choir who hymn the story, both on and offstage. These huge massed ranks of voices, seen and unseen, create a kind of surging community around the stories it tells. It’s a sense of community that’s hugely fitting for the subject of child abductions, and the way that they stir up mass hysteria, mass searching, and mass grieving in turn.

Through the ’80s and '90s, it felt as though every summer was marked by the story of a child who’d disappeared, and a tabloid hysteria that simmered on for months or years until its grim conclusion. Why do they hold such fascination? Some writers have put forward the idea that moral panic over child abduction was a backlash against feminism: the moral right's attempt to refocus attention on the nuclear family, with the child at its heart. Before the Catholic church was implicated in child abuse itself, it was a source of stability that emphasised the mother's role in protecting children from the outside world.

The religious imagery of It Folds emphasises the contradictory role of Catholicism in both nurturing and threatening children: an Irish priest briefs altar boys without his shirt on, but it's only when he skips mass that he's abducted. The damage done to parents, under new pressure to protect their children, is explored too. There’s a kind of surreal riff on the way that grieving parents have to perform their relationship for hordes of prurient outsiders: a man and a woman play two halves of a pantomime horse, but they stretch and pull in opposite directions, dragging each other to the floor.

The silliness of a pantomime horse might seem to be at odds with the grim subject matter of child abduction. But the seriousness of the performance is complexified, rather than undermined, by irreverent moments: like a murder ballad strummed on a banjo, or a beautiful hymn sung by a chorus of sheet-wearing ghosts. And the afterlife it imagines might not be sanctioned by any church, but something about its unified beauty lifts us to the heavens, all the same.

- AS

It Folds was on at Summerhall, 5-28 August http://festival16.summerhall.co.uk/event/it-folds/

More information on Brokentalkers' work http://www.brokentalkers.ie/

More information on Junk Ensemble's work http://www.junkensemble.com/

How ideas of stranger danger have changed the way children play http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8399749.stm

The influence of christianity on child abuse hysteria  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/books/review-we-believe-the-children-on-child-abuse-hysteria-in-the-1980s.html

THE HOURS BEFORE WE WAKE // Tremolo Theatre

Judging by the extreme rarity of mobile phones, tablets, or even laptops on stage, the theatre world has barely caught up with the technological realities of the present, let alone the future. Tremolo Theatre’s The Hours Before I Wake doesn’t step too dramatically beyond the realities of the world we live in. But its commitment to representing a social media-rich, technologically-dense world makes it feel unusual - a sci-fi satire that’s close to home.

The biggest innovation in this dystopian future is that dreams are both monetised, and controlled. Individual consumers can select what they want to dream about, and take a pill to ensure that they can enact their fantasy painlessly during their sleeping hours. For Ian, the show’s protagonist, this fantasy revolves around becoming a superhero who rescues his office crush Janice from burning buildings. It’s childish stuff. But then, Ian is a huge pampered baby, cocooned from the harsh realities of the world by a soothing robot voice who helps guide him through his hours away from work - and reports any untoward behaviour straight back to his superiors.

Theorists have written about the dangers of a ‘frictionless’ world, where sharing on social media becomes constant and thoughtless -- leading to a situation where governments are able to gather a huge amount of individuals with minimum efforts. And companies are quick to take advantage of these new opportunities, too. Business are already able to track everything from their employees' movements to their facial expressions to their menstrual cycles.

The psychological effects of this dependency are less understood. Recent research has associated social media use (specifically, comparison-type behaviours) with onset of depressive symptoms. The Hours Before We Wake predicts a comfortable acceptance of constant sharing that's facilitated by soothing drugs [rather like Aldous Huxley's conception of the drug Soma in Brave New World]. 

This young company have devised a pretty dispiriting future, one that's a logical extension of a rapidly evolving corporate culture. But as its protagonist Ian is inspired to rebel against his tightly-controlled environment, it demonstrates how easy algorithms can be subverted by, as well as built from, human behaviour at its most individual.

- AS

The Hours Before We Wake was on at the Edinburgh Fringe from 5-28 August http://www.thehoursbeforewewake.com/

How frictionless sharing undermines individual privacy http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/how-frictionless-sharing-could-undermine-your-legal-right-to-privacy/254277/

Surveillance in the workplace http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/corporate-surveillance-activists/406201/

Impact of social media on mental health https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/blog/social-media-and-young-peoples-mental-health

PLAYING WITH POETRY // DeafFirefly aka Donna Williams

‘Poetry in motion’ is a phrase that's most often used as a cliche, one that’s used to describe fast cars or effortlessly talented dancers. But it’s also an entirely literal description of poet Donna William’s work. Her performance ‘Playing With Poetry’ explores the interplay between English and BSL poetry. Her first poems are spoken in English. Then, she performs them in BSL, her movements bringing tenderness and lyricism

Williams used to perform poems only in BSL, but as she reports, she became frustrated with the way that audience members would praise her poems as “beautiful”, but when she asked them what they thought of the ideas, they’d admit they hadn’t understood a word.

This performance opens with poems performed in BSL, and simultaneously translated into the English language by interpreters. Sometimes, there’s a disjunct between the two, as a hugely expressive stream of movements is interpreted as only a few words of spoken English. And there’s an emotional depth to her BSL poems that translation can’t always convey, either. Her poem about adopting a cat involves a series of hugely expressive movements, as she becomes a series of scared, bold, and sleepy pets at Battersea Dogs Home. When she finally finds her chosen pet - a deaf cat - her caress has a warmth that words can’t convey.

The lyricism of William’s work conveys the closeness of BSL to other physical methods of communication, like dance or mime. Often it's tender, and soothing. But it can also be intensely political.

One of her angriest poems talks about the experience of being shut out of the deaf world, by a family that were desperate for her communicate in spoken English, however much she struggled with it. Her decision to learn BSL at university is experienced as a headrush, an emotionally intense discovery of community she’d needed her whole life.

Her performance communicates the richness of BSL, and by showing its vast expressive potential she illustrates how much she’s gained by becoming bilingual in English and BSL. And her final poem, performed with interpretation, has a beauty that suggests how much is lost by pressuring deaf people to participate in a hearing world.

- Alice Saville

Deaffirely: Playing With Poetry was on at Spotlites from 11-12 August. http://www.spotlites.co.uk/edfringe-deaffirefly-16.shtml

Donna Williams' website: https://deaffirefly.com/

Tabith Laksimi on the importance of BSL as a second language: http://limpingchicken.com/2014/10/27/tabitha-laksimi-the-uk-needs-bsl-as-a-second-language-heres-why/

SPOONFACE STEINBURG // Top Right Theatre

Spoonface knows that people in operas die beautifully and she wants to die beautifully too. Diagnosed with autism, and later terminal cancer, the child walks along silver linings in this hour-long monologue. Tackling the difficulties of development disabilities and terminal illness, Spoonface’s optimism never falters, as the backing track of Puccini’s ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’ lulls us into a romantic view of death.

More than 1 in 100 people in the UK live with autism, and they often have difficulty communicating and reading emotions. Because of this, Spoonface’s language is simple. Linear trains of thought are very clearly laid out, in order to prevent the world from being overwhelming.

In the periphery of Spoonface’s monologue is recognition of the difficulty of caring for an autistic child and how that is part of the reason for her parents’ split. While the common claim that 80% of autism families divorce was found to be false in a recent study, having an autistic child without doubt puts extra pressure on a couple. David Mitchell writes about telling people his child’s diagnosis. ‘The replies come quickly but read awkwardly: condolences are inappropriate in the absence of a corpse, and there aren't any So Sorry Your Offspring Has Turned Out Autistic e-cards.’

Named after her unusually rotund face, Spoonface tells us about her short life. Lee Hall, most famous for Billy Elliot, wrote this monologue for radio in 1997 but here Sasha Brooks performs as Spoonface in pyjamas, radiating innocence and vulnerability. Though covering desperately sad topics, this monologue tries to be optimistic, picking up on the positive parts of this life dotted with misfortune. Spoonface values her individuality, saying, ‘to be different is to be who you are’. Mitchell, too, is sympathetic to this idea, noting that gradually you discover that each child with autism ‘possesses its own singular beauty, its own life-enriching experiences.’

- KW

Spoonface Steinburg played at theSpace @ Jury's Inn through August 27 - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/spoonface-steinberg

Information about autism http://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/asd.aspx##Prevalence

A review of the original radio play http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/dont-be-afraid-of-spoonface-1165152.html

Autism spectrum disorder http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/autistic-spectrum-disorder/pages/introduction.aspx

Autism’s effect on a family http://www.aamft.org/members/familytherapyresources/articles/08_FTM_3_18_22.pdf

Divorce rates of parents with autistic children http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/7926161/Parents-of-autistic-children-more-likely-to-divorce.html

David Mitchell: Learning to live with my son’s autism https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jun/29/david-mitchell-my-sons-autism

SCORCH // Prime Cut Productions

‘My body is a weird black hole I drag around with me’

Amy McAllister plays the gender-curious teen Kes in Stacey Gregg’s monologue revealing society’s lack of understanding towards gender fluidity.

Based on the real case of Justine McNally, Scorch shows the law’s gender binaries when Kes, born female but uncomfortable in her gender so presenting herself as male to a girl she meets online, is accused of gender fraud and sexual abuse. In the eyes of the law a woman can’t rape another woman, as according to the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the penetration can only be done with a penis. Where the law stands on the concept of being gender fluid with regards to accused rape is unclear due to its rarity.

Language is also questioned in Scorch as we learn queer slang, with ‘cute boi’ meaning a biologically female person who presents themselves in a boyish way, often genderqueer. Though the internet provides a safe place to explore or hide gender, when real life romance crashes and burns, Kes is dropped into a seething pile of accusations and assumptions. When the press get a hold of Kes’ story they call her ‘lesbian’, automatically defining her gender as well as her sexuality. They label her before she’s decided, without providing her with a choice.

McNally called herself ‘Scott’ when presenting herself online, forming a relationship over several years with a young girl. Gayle Newland is another accused case of gender fraud. Calling herself ‘Kye’, Newland insisted the woman she had sex with wear a blindfold, and would penetrate her with a prosthetic penis. Newland’s justification was that she was body-conscious, but in preventing her partner from seeing her strap-on, she hid her biological identity. Gavin Haynes writes of women such as Newland and McNally, ‘Theirs were attempts to push back against the physical realities of the world in which they found themselves at an almost atomic level.’ The law is not up-keeping with more modern, fluid understandings of gender. When McNally was taken to court, her judge called her deception ‘selfish and callous’, rather than attempting to understand her reasoning and questioning her gender identity.

Kes’ family’s views aren’t made entirely clear, and the details of the court case yearn to be explained, but Scorch brings to light the lack of support for people going through a gender identity crisis. It is an area that is far too under-researched, and Scorch reveals this lack of understanding, urging us to do something about it.

- KW

Scorch was on at 18.05 at Summerhall through August 28. - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/scorch

Sexual Offenses Act 2003 http://tinyurl.com/zkjnx3o

Justine McNally: http://tinyurl.com/oeomtxk

Queer slang http://tinyurl.com/36jxfr

Is the law on rape sexist?: http://www.blmsolicitors.co.uk/2014/03/is-the-law-on-rape-sexist/

BBC rape briefing: http://tinyurl.com/zjn2hl7

Raped by a woman: http://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a19495/women-raped-by-women/

A forum for expressing gender curiosity: http://emptyclosets.com/forum/gender-identity-expression/154319-gender-curious.html

Understanding your gender identity: http://teenhealthsource.com/giso/understanding-sexual-orientation-gender-identity/

Gayle Newland http://www.theweek.co.uk/65251/what-the-gayle-newland-sex-deceit-case-means-for-transgender-people

Strap-on dildo morality http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/justine-mcnally-scott-gemma-barker-strap-on-dildo-morality

There’s been a modest but welcome uptick in the media’s ability to report sensitively on transgender issues, recently. Outspoken campaigners like journalist Paris Lees have helped dispel some of the very worst cliches of tabloid outrage, celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner have brought a new glamour to trans life, and Stonewall have finally added the ‘T’ in LGBT into their consciousness-raising remit.

But the case of Gayle Newland was too complex and too unusual for newspapers to attempt anything like tact. 19-year-old Newland developed a male online personal and built up a long online friendship, then relationship, with a woman. They met up on multiple occasions, and the woman wore a blindfold during their sexual encounters - before pressing charges for sexual assault when she discovered she’d been ‘tricked’. Following the Newland case, legal observers have pointed out its serious potential ramifications for transgender people: if they don’t disclose their trans status, they could be liable for charges of sexual assault through deception.

Stacey Gregg’s Scorch is directly inspired by the case. But where Newland’s voice has necessarily remained silent, Gregg presents the story entirely from Kes’s point of view. Kes is naive, in love, and incapable of understanding how badly their actions hurt the girl they forms a relationship with. Kes’s life online is a rich community full of resources, help and support for trans teenagers - they make assuming a new gender identity feel natural, and normal. But in the world Kes lives in, it’s anything but: “I feel like an alien”, Kes says.

In one particularly moving passage, Kes reels off all the completely legal ways people can deceive their partners: by hiding the fact they’re married, by giving a false identity, or even just by saying they love them when they don’t. It’s a passage that shows the intricacies of human relationships and gender identities, and the bluntness of the laws designed to govern them.

Newland didn’t claim a trans identity in court. And nor does Kes. In an interview, Gregg has stated that although Scorch intersects with trans questions, it’s a piece that “boils down to something that’s actually much more mundane, which is just misogyny.”  The responses Kes faces from family and friends highlight the fact that trans men are often either invisible, or mistrusted, in a world that’s suspicious of attempts to claim masculinity.

Away from the crystal-clear transformation narratives in mainstream media, gender identity is more murky. Gregg’s piece shades in all its intricacies, and shows how difficult a place the world is for teenagers who aren’t ready to choose their own identity, outside the world of video games.

- AS

Scorch was on at the Edinburgh Fringe, Aug 5-28 https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/scorch

Interview with Stacey Gregg in the Irish Times http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/stage/stacey-gregg-on-gender-identity-and-the-theatre-s-gutting-lack-of-women-1.2424367

Impact of Gayle Newland case on trans rights http://www.theweek.co.uk/65251/what-the-gayle-newland-sex-deceit-case-means-for-transgender-people

Increased risk of mental health issues in transgender young people  https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/transgender-youth-at-risk-for-depression-suicide/

BUBBLE SCHMEISIS // Nick Cassenbaum

Cultural identity is made out of little, everyday things, just as the character of a neighbourhood is made up of the everyday rather than the exceptional. The best sign of gentrification in London’s East End isn’t the Cereal Killer Café, but the slow closure of its greasy spoons and corner shops and their replacement with more Pret A Mangers. Nick Cassenbaum’s performance is about Jewish identity, and the self-care ritual of the Schvitz, an intergenerational steam bath that unfolds as a psychogeographic narrative of the Jewish East End. It has orbiting interests of personal, urban and cultural history, and through them questions the identities of individuals, groups and cities.

Biographic detail is specific and explored, but the historical sweep of Cassenbaum’s journey intersects with many other stories. Even some 400 miles from London, Edinburgh audiences recognise the narrative of old rituals falling away, as cities change and traditions atrophy. Although the schvitz specifically may have a future; In other cities the steam rooms have opened to all, male and female, from whatever nationality, and had some success. Perhaps the key might be to let the tradition change, rather than hold on to something already slipping away.

In doing so though something specific and historic will be lost. The schvitz is an old-world thing, a wash that is as much about taking the time to relax as it is getting clean. In a constantly connected city, with few respites from modernity, the importance of a space for discussion and a location to be at ease with your own body in, is a rare and ancient luxury.

- LC

Bubble Schmeisis played at Summerhall through August 28 - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/bubble-schmeisis

Nick Cassenbaum - http://www.nickcassenbaum.com

Schvitz (from Yiddish) - http://www.jewish-languages.org/jewish-english-lexicon/words/483

 Having A Schvitz (Jewish Chronicle) - http://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-features/143194/having-a-shvitz-working-a-nostalgic-head-steam

 New York Schvitz Resurgence - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/nyregion/after-124-years-the-russian-and-turkish-baths-are-still-a-hot-spot.html

We Need to Talk About Gentrification (Lifehacker) - http://www.lifehacker.co.uk/2015/10/02/the-battle-of-the-cereal-killer-cafe-and-why-we-need-to-talk-about-gentrification

TRIGGER // Christeene

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

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

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

- Lewis Church

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

Christeene - http://christeenemusic.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

CAMILLE // Kamila Klamut

History has painted Camille Claudin as 'Rodin's tragic lover' - a muse-turned-artist-turned-asylum patient, desperate and alone. But although her 10 year love affair with the master of French sculpture has defined her, she's increasingly recognised as an artist in her own right: the 70th anniversary of her death was marked with asignificant retrospective of her work at the Rodin Museum.

Polish artist Kamila Klamut isn't the first to bring Claudin's story to the stage. But her physical solo performance draws attention to the bodily indignities and torments she suffered after her brother committed her to an asylum. She adopts a low voice to explain his rationale, that she's bringing shame on their wealthy family's reputation. It's a frightening insight into a time when asylums were a form of social control, designed to keep people who threatened the social order out of sight - and mental health treatment within their walls was all but non-existent.

Flashes into Claudel's past reveal an unconventional, fierce woman: one who stepped out of a life of privilege to live as an artist making then-shocking nude sculptures, and who sought an abortion at a time where doing so was both dangerous, and seen as an unforgivable sin. But she was held back by a patriarchal art world: where her lover Rodin presided over a large workshop that could make over 300 bronze casts of The Kiss, her struggle to win wealthy backers meant she was restricted to cheaper materials, and her behaviour became increasingly erratic. Over 100 years on, it's impossible to interpret her true mental state. Was she too far outside of social norms to be allowed to live unchallenged? Or was she genuinely mentally ill, suffering from delusions of persecution by Rodin and the art world?

Klamut shrinks in on herself as Claudel's years in imprisonment pass, her letters ignored. She changes her from an expansive, wild artist into a petty, child-like being who quibbles over butter and greasy soup. But even in the asylum, her class buys her a kind of comfort: she is sent wine, and chocolate, and alcohol-soaked cherries.

The text of Camille is culled from Claudel's letters, meaning that the personalities of Rodin and her family are only visible from her own, increasingly desperate perspective. It is difficult to truly understand how she felt when her words are isolated from the context of the social world that lionised and destroyed her. But her physical suffering is intensely visible, as Klamut's contorted body becomes a visual representation of the oppression visited on Camille by both society, and the asylum that she was imprisoned in.

- Alice Saville

Camille was on at Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe http://festival16.summerhall.co.uk/event/camille/

Kamila Klamut’s website http://www.kamilaklamut.pl/

An overview of Camille Claudel’s life and work http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/exhibition/camille-claudel

Asylums as a form of social control, rather than sites for medical treatment http://www.academia.edu/894595/Getting_Out_of_the_Asylum_Understanding_the_Confinement_of_the_Insane_in_the_Nineteenth_Century

Rodin’s workshop, and the expense involved in being a sculptor http://festival16.summerhall.co.uk/event/camille/

THE INTERFERENCE // Pepperdine University (USA)

A series of high-profile cases has drawn attention to the idea that a ‘rape culture’ exists in American colleges - a micro-climate where sexually predatory behaviour is both normalised, and enabled by social codes around masculinity. And one, too, where victims are either disbelieved or blamed. Cork-based playwright Lynda Radley’s latest play is a 360 degree view of a female student Karen’s experience of reporting a campus rape, and seeking justice. But unlike most reporting on campus rapes, it takes her perspective, showing the serious mental health impact of her experiences while her college football star rapist Smith emerges unscathed.

There’s a culture of doubting rape victims, one that’s made worse both by right-wing observers who pounce on the very rare incidents of false reports. In particular, the 2014 Rolling Stone article ‘A Rape On Campus’ received widespread criticism for the way in which it trusted and relied on the testimony of victim ‘Jackie’ - the magazine retracted the article in the wake of multiple lawsuits. In Radley’s play, media commentators use the discredited Rolling Stone article as a reason to disbelieve Karen’s story.

But there are other, more pragmatic reasons for doubting Karen. Smith is a star quarterback, who has huge symbolic and monetary value to the college: the administration rallies round their sporting cash cow. Meanwhile, hostile college students point to Smith’s social cachet to suggest that Karen must have been attracted to him, then regretted the incident later.

Radley’s play is densely researched, giving it a verbatim feel. It offers an insight into the huge range of strategies used to discredit women who report rapes: including the notorious 1999 case where a judge ruled that a woman wearing jeans could not have be raped, as they were difficult to remove without her consent. But her comprehensive approach is given immediacy and urgency by its use of a cast of 12 performers from Peppardine University. They’ve got a stereotypically all-American preppiness and wholesomeness that evokes a culture that’s very different from British universities - one where sports stars are idolised, and fraternities give a social elite of male students added control over the wider student body.

Karen’s experience transforms her from being a confident member of this social elite into a hated outcast, depressed and failing her classes. It’s a multi-layered insight into how the mental health repercussions of rape are multiplied by a system that works to silence survivors by systematic gaslighting, bullying, and intimidation.

- Alice Saville

The Interference was on at C Venues from 9-16 August - more information here: http://www.cthefestival.com/press/2016/the-interference

Rolling Stone’s retraction of its article ‘A Rape On Campus’: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/a-note-to-our-readers-20141205

A survey of the three lawsuits in progress as part of the fallout from the Rolling Stone article ‘A Rape On Campus’: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/10/473702981/revisiting-rolling-stone-s-discredited-campus-rape-story

Judge’s ruling in 1999 rape case: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/277263.stm

Lynda Radley’s website: http://www.lyndaradley.com/

ELEPHANT OF MY HEART // Prospero Theatre

There’s a long and rich interplay between meditation and the arts, including music and artworks including the ancient Indian tradition of mandalas. 

But bringing meditation into conventional theatre is a little more unusual. Elephant of my Heart is a stage adaptation of Jessica Clements’ book of the same name: Clements herself even performs in the show’s chorus. It’s a memoir of her time in hospital recovering from a brain haemorrhage as a nine year old child. She believes that the inner travels she went on, guided by an elephant, triggered her healing process. 

Prospero Theatre adapt her story using familiar techniques of children’s theatre: puppets, songs, games, and audience participation. But there’s an emphasis on the body, and on creating a new language to talk about illness and recovery. Jess is taught that the scars covering her head are sewn up by a black panther’s whisker, and kept safe by invisible dragonflies. Medicalised terms are demystified by being paired with analogies from the natural world, in a holistic approach designed to lead Jess towards a new comfort with her recovering body.

At the close of the performance, Clements leads us on a simple visualisation, designed to help the audience find their own inner animals. It highlights the closeness between mindfulness exercises and the kind of imaginative games that children often play - their careful focus during  the visualisation suggests that perhaps children’s comfort with their own imaginations makes them more receptive to techniques that adults feel too inhibited to try.

Little is known about whether healing can be accelerated by meditation, but recent studies tentatively suggest that the stress-reducing properties of meditation can strengthen the immune system. Certainly, there are clear links between meditation and the state of mental wellbeing needed for a full recovery. But perhaps the strongest message of Elephant of My Heart is the importance of developing a language and story that enables people in recovery to understand their illness, whether or not that means cultivating an inner jungle.

- Alice Saville

Elephant of My Heart was on at the Edinburgh Fringe, Greenside, from 5-16th August. More information: http://prosperotheatre.com/prospero-community-company/elephant-of-my-heart/

The role of mandalas in meditation: http://www.chopra.com/mandalas-sri-yantras

More information on Jessica Clements’ book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elephant-My-Heart-Jessica-Clements/dp/1452585725

Studies which tentatively suggest the positive impact of meditation on the immune system: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26799456