Dr Gemma Beckley // Mindfulness

Mindfulness was a three day event led by Dr. Gemma Beckley (clinical psychologist and teacher of mindfulness and Transcendental Meditation) and her father, Colin (a recovering addict and founder of the TM trust). Throughout the weekend they gave brief synopses of mindfulness and T.M, and their positive effects on the brain and general mental wellbeing. MRI scans have shown that regular meditation increases the frontal cortex of the brain; this is the area that contains most of the dopamine sensitive neurons, controlling things like personality, decision making, planning and speech.

We are encouraged to visualise meditation as an ocean. Mindfulness is likened to surfing the waves, learning to cope with the swells of chaos and adversity. Mindfulness is one of the tools used to access TM. TM is like diving down into calm, still waters. We are given a raisin and guided through the process of mindful eating by first examining the fruit using all the senses. In doing so we are able to feast and feel sated by that single piece of fruit. I could see that having a mindful approach to eating might have a positive effect on dieting and obesity. Then we are taught mindful breathing - just breathing in and out, clearing our minds of all other thoughts. It is only about the breath, if the mind gets distracted then you bring it back to the breath. To end our session, we practise some simple yawning and stretching. We are reminded how babies stretch after long periods of sleep, as do animals, and see that this is the body’s way to connect with and reinvigorate the self.

Cynics might have us believe that meditation is ‘wacky’ and possibly dangerous. Only today in the I newspaper Richard Vaughan suggests it ‘can cause damage to children who have existing problems, while the focus on happiness can “pathologise” normal emotions like sadness’. However, during periods of extreme anxiety it is hard to see how focusing on the breath, calmly breathing in and out, clearing the mind of all but the breath, can have a detrimental effect. (SE)

- Sandra Elkins

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

The Brain Made Simple - http://brainmadesimple.com

NHS Mindfulness - http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/Pages/mindfulness.aspx

Mindfulness at the Mental Health Foundation - https://bemindful.co.uk

Transcendental Meditation - http://uk.tm.org/

 

Daniel Oliver // Max Dyspraxe

The Wellcome Collection website lets you know that Daniel Oliver's Weird Séances come with a 16+ suitability notice. As everyone's getting settled into their seats for his talk at Normal? Festival of the Brain, an on-screen slide tells us that this spin-off, Max Dyspraxe, has been adapted in two ways – he'll not be wielding an axe, or getting his kit off. This is reiterated by the promoter, Susanna Howard.

Then Oliver arrives into the performance space wearing head-to-toe army camouflage netting, wielding an axe. He reads his own slide, walks off stage, walks back on, discards axe. It's the first laugh and we're off. Unaware of his work, the premise of Oliver's deconstructionist event begins it's unravelling by hurtling into audience participation, where the first 'victim' is brought up to hold a branch. Later on, we learn that bit was arranged beforehand. This is swiftly followed by the identification of someone else who Oliver wants to 'play with'. She winds up wearing his army camouflage netting in a coat-like fashion for the duration.

Oliver’s Weird Séances are described online as:

"raucously, roughly layered participatory performances about participatory performance. They haphazardly emerge from an unabashed embracing of Daniel’s Dyspraxia. Each show is clunkily crow-barred into its site and context - re-jigged, added to, undone and perverted, so that no two performances are the same."

Next he hones in on another participant who arrives on stage as Tree Two. He fails to remember her name time and again, as I am now, although she continues to prompt him with it. But he reminds us it's part of his condition, and although it's hard to know whether it's intentional it's funny either way. Tree Two plays along to a point but is awk-wood at times. As the show progresses we're lured into a dark pantomime of his explaining the plot as it unfolds, hilarious in its awkward simplicity.  We're encouraged to imagine the scene in the future where the audience have been slaughtered by said axe. He sets the scene in the Awk-woods. We are, Oliver tells us, in some woods in the future looking back on a traumatic incident that occurred in this space, during this show. The trauma of the event is underlined by Tree's Two's loss of the 'friend' she came to the show with. Tree Two names her Jennifer, which in this case is made all the funnier because this lady came to the show on her own. Not knowing anyone either, she's made to identify and name the person she imagines she came along with, hence the birth of Jennifer. Once pointed out she is given some plastic sheeting to wear.

Dr Daniel Oliver didn't receive his Dyspraxia diagnosis until embarking on a PhD after it was suggested he be tested. And the show is made all the more charming and poignant when Oliver meets a similarly dyspraxic audience member of around 13. He’s encouraged to interject, and whatever he comes up with is warmly welcomed as Oliver stops the show to engage. It's a verbal hug that invites him to be himself, despite how others may perceive him as a result of his condition. As an audience we love, hold and encourage both. As described the story unravels and contains much audience participation; awkwardness, noise, people playing instruments, and much laughter.

After the programme finishes I go over to ask Oliver how he thinks he would have fared to have his diagnosis as early as Jack's, because I wonder at the effect these labels place on kids. Oliver says it's a bit of a double-edged sword as he believes now that he developed some savvy strategies to deal with his condition when younger that went on to serve him, where being diagnosed has made it an easy cop-out on occasion to fall back on the Dyspraxia. This show was bright, charming, very funny, inclusive, and educational. I walked away having peered into the window of why a Dyspraxic may feel they don't always fit in with the rest of the world. (JU)

- Jane Unsworth

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Weird seance - https://wellcomecollection.org/events/daniel-oliver-weird-seance

Symptoms of Dyspraxia - http://dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/dyspraxia-children/symptoms/

What is Neurodiversity? - https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/my-life-aspergers/201310/what-is-neurodiversity

Firms Seeking Neurodiversity - https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/07/software-firms-are-actively-seeking-neurodiverse-employees/

UnitedMind // Laughter Workshop

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine. ⎯ Lord Byron

I am lying on the floor, flat on my back, my belly convulsing. To put it scientifically, I am in the midst of a gelotoleptic fit. Or, slightly less dramatically, I am laughing. I have no clue what I am laughing at. It’s a Sunday afternoon and I have just spent the last hour having a chuckle with total strangers at a Laughter Workshop. Lottke Mikkelsen of UnitedMind is a certified Laughter Yoga Leader. She spends an hour with us, putting us through a series of gelastic gymnastics to get our funny bones engaged and our comfort zone well and truly ousted. 

Humour therapy uses the physiological process of laughter to relieve physical and emotional stress. This is not a modern phenomenon. Dr William Fry became, in 1964, the first self-proclaimed ‘Gelotologist’; an expert in laughter. Norman Cousins is infamous in the medical world for his claim that the healing power of laughter therapy did for him what traditional medicine could not and effectively cured him of a severe degenerative disease. The argument is that your body cannot distinguish between real and fake laughter, ergo the benefits of fake laughter are the same as that of the genuine. Laughter reduces levels of stress hormones, suppressing our fight-or-flight response and decreasing our blood pressure.

After the workshop I demonstrate one of the tasks to my partner and he remarks that I look a little creepy. I probably do. Staring deeply into strangers’ eyes as you try to laugh out loud in a way that resembles a greeting is not your conventional weekend activity. I think of the stigma attached to laughing. How we become aware of the right and wrong way to laugh (pig snorting=no) and how laughter can be both a social bonding tool and a tool of punishment and social correction. Make a fool of yourself in front of your friends, be subject to their mockery, and it is unlikely you will make the same mistake again. Equally, we actively seek out comic relief, willing to fork out in exchange for the humour of our favourite comedians.

Lottke tells us that she makes a phone call three times a day to spend 10 minutes laughing with her fellow devotees. And so we spend the session running through exercises of faux laughter. Our final exercise requires us to lie on the floor and relax, letting the laughter flow if we feel it. There is silence for a few seconds, and then someone begins to chuckle. It’s a genuine, heartfelt, snorting laugh. It’s hard to resist, and soon I am laughing so hard that my sides are hurting. I’m no scientist, but it feels good. (BB)

- Bex Bell

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

 A Laughter/Pain Case Study - http://www.laughteronlineuniversity.com/norman-cousins-a-laughterpain-case-study/

Laughter Yoga - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGNOF8DVIPQ

Norman Cousins - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--CW46nYRsw#action=share

Inside the Mind: Laughter - http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/emotions/laughter7.htm

Stacy Makishi // Vespertime

In the opening moments of Vespertime the audience is introduced to a number of unusual words. Some are from the Hawaii of Makishi's birth, others (like vesper) are English words with a little known etymology. Other words are familiar but are given mysterious prophetic importance through the lens of Makishi's framing of them within the story she's spinning. So, what is Vespertime? Stacy tells us that the word means evening prayers, a sermon, or could even euphemistically refer to intercourse. The aim of her performance is therefore laid out from the start; Vespertime is intended to be an edifying message and a shared euphoric moment.

The gospel contained in this work is a call to consider what drives our actions in life. It is a plea to turn from the desire for revenge and the shame of regret and choose instead an attitude of generosity. It's a response to every limiting impulse with a cry for 'more'! There are a number of ways in which Makishi's Vespertime resembles a religious service, like the moments of communal singing with Tracy Chapman standing in for traditional hymns. Our scriptures for the evening come not from the Bible, but the movies of Demi Moore. The evening is peppered with pop-culture references that stand-in for the shared language of a religious gathering, and like a good preacher Makishi weaves in illustrations from her own life and manages to keep some sense of a larger truth at the centre of it.

One of Vespertime's core references is Melville's Moby Dick. The novel stands in directly for a number of things during the show. Yet also within the idea of this giant white whale (this object of obsession that is unknowable, unobtainable and constantly hidden by the chaos of the ocean), is a picture of how the idea of God is perceived in the show.

In Vespertime, coincidences and forced correlations between events are ascribed portentous significance. Makishi presents a worldview in which everything that happens potentially contains a spiritual message that wants to be decoded. Vespertime is a carefully constructed work that brings together seemingly disparate references to create a meaningful cohesive whole. But Makishi doesn't claim ownership of this careful construction, she presents herself as a channel for something larger, some muse that comes from outside. As member of her audience (or congregation, or pod) I left feeling uplifted, but I was also left to consider just where the work came from, was its source something within Makishi herself as the artist? Or was it, as she claimed, the influence of some outside voice, some muse, or God? Is reading meaning into our circumstances something that is perceived purely in our minds, or is it something more? And if it helps us navigate the real world is the source of that meaning significant? (JL)

- Jim Lockey

LINKS RELEVANT TO THIS DIAGNOSIS:

Stacy Makishi - www.stacymakishi.co.uk

More Live Art and Inner Voices - https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/dec/11/kim-noble-will-die-review

Madness, creativity and religious experience – https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201204/madness-creativity-and-religious-experience

The first book written in English by a female mystic about her experiences of hearing the voice of God - Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelations_of_Divine_Love)

 

Mobile / Paper Birds Theatre Company

Mobile marks the second installment of Paper Birds Theatre Company’s trilogy on social identity. Performed in a disused caravan before an audience of nine, the play aims to explore the emotional ambivalence caused by social mobility. After a brief, somewhat awkward ‘name game’ on deck chairs outside, the guests are invited in, offered biscuits and other hospitalities while our host gives us an overview of her situation. Her story is a familiar one: after the abrupt termination of a long term relationship, she finds herself without a flat to live in or a safety net to catch her. She is forced to return home. Perhaps in attempt to salvage some sense of progress, she shuns her mother’s actual home in preference for the caravan instead.

As Cindy tells her story her tone is apologetic and polite; she avoids dwelling on the disappointments of the previous years, avoids judging her absent mother, avoids making any real value judgements at all. Yet the caravan itself seems a working class symbol that she is silently wrestling against (physically misplacing items, shifting clutter, moving seats). Having spent her twenties affluent and in love, you can sense that she perceives her surroundings differently now; senses a tackiness to it and is simultaneously burdened by the guilt of this knowledge. Here, the immersive format works well; as we politely engage with our host, there's a vague, unspoken discomfort; the cramped seating arrangement bringing home her sense of constriction.

Cindy’s tale is augmented with verbatim recordings of those who’ve ‘made it’, other working class heroes who found riches or prestige later in life. Yet, similar to our host, their stories progress falteringly; they stammer or equivocate as they describe their past, they alight from ideas as soon as they land upon them. It’s as if the subjects are caught between two grammars; the rules of one silently militating against the other.

Indeed, this is one of the most intriguing aspects of the play, discussions of class leaves the subjects tongue tied and awkward. It seems there isn’t a shared language or set of values by which to explore the idea of the working class. The speakers are forced to perceive themselves from a myriad of perspectives, from within and without. At times, they see social hardship as part of their personal narrative, an origin story by which they define themselves; at other moments they perceive it as a past that they have overcome, something to be defined against.

We see these sort of mixed messages echoed on a larger scale by society and within the media. The very existence of a working class in the UK is apparently subject for debate, with politicians proudly declaring its extinction even while growing numbers of the population identify with the status. On a more qualitative level, perceptions of the working class seem to vacillate wildly from objects of derision (as indicated the the slew of ‘poverty-porn’ programmes rolled out each season) to exotic beings that enamour (look no further than the surging popularity of grime music among the middle classes). These kind of mystifications seem increasingly dangerous, particularly in a society as polarised as ours. As the recent referendum illustrates, there appears to be a mutual bafflement across classes and across the country itself.

Mobile plainly conveys the dislocation and ambivalence that can accompany social advancement. Instigated by a social scientist and the product of many year’s research, the play maintains a broad focus; through a series of foggy, personal anecdotes, the show highlights the bewildering process of talking about and understanding class; a concept which is so emotionally loaded and conceptually slippery. Yet beyond the realm of the play, this conceptual ambiguity translates into real-world, physical consequences. For the first time in recent history, the ‘health gap’ between the rich and poor is widening and there now exists greater discrepancy than ever before (since the early 90’s, the gap has increased by 1.7 years). The explanation for this — that the poor are making ‘damaging lifestyle choices’ — remains deeply provisional. The very impulses driving these choices on a systemic level remain shrouded. Without a shared vocabulary, we arrive at an impasse. As conversations about class become increasingly elliptical, the links between class and physical health reify, transform into an inscrutable fact. If the experience of class becomes ineffable, health becomes a privilege, awarded to some, on a basis that is deemed either arbitrary or mysterious. (SG)

http://www.thepaperbirds.com/

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/labour-says-the-working-class-no-longer-exists-so-why-do-60-per-cent-of-us-claim-to-belong-to-it-8452739.html

http://www.consented.co.uk/read/life-on-the-dole-britains-obsession-with-poverty-porn/

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21701257-results-paint-picture-angry-country-divided-class-age-and-region-country-divided

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-36170289

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/a-25-year-gap-between-the-life-expectancy-of-rich-and-poor-londoners-is-a-further-indictment-of-our-9061888.htm

AN ACCOUNT OF A SAVAGE / Wrong Shoes Theatre Company

The Oxford Dictionary defines the noun 'savage' as 1. a member of a people regarded as primitive and uncivilised, or 2. a brutal or vicious person. In An Account of a Savage, we meet both.

Joan was found on the edge of a forest sixty miles from the capital. It's thought bad weather and a subsequent lack of food flushed her out. We're introduced to her after her capture, and it's clear from the outset that life out of the woods isn't treating her well. Joan has become an object of popular fascination, and the subject of scientific experiments. 

Set during an unknown period in the not-all-that-distant past, An Account of a Savage presents a damming portrait of the medical profession, and by extension anyone in a position of power. By the final scene, the stage is smeared with Joan's vomit and blood, she's trussed up and only semi-conscious, and her endless roars and screams are still ringing in the audience's ears.  

From Romulus and Remus – the brothers raised by a she-wolf, who went on to found the city of Rome – to Mowgli and Tarzan, the feral child is the stuff that stories are made of. Likewise the savage, noble or otherwise. Caliban was raised by a witch rather than a wolf, but his fate demonstrates how one human can enslave and degrade another in the dubious name of civilisation. 

Feral children stories continue to fascinate. In 2002, the Telegraph ran an article with the headline: 'Wolf boy is welcomed home by mother after years in the wild', while more recently, in 2015, the BBC published a story featuring the photography of Julia Fullerton-Batten called 'Feral: The children raised by wolves'. The article was as much about child abuse and neglect as it was about humans living with animals. 

If you had any romantic notions about feral children, An Account of a Savage comprehensively dashes them. It shows the violence we are capable of inflicting on the vulnerable, on people we consider different from ourselves. The savage here is not the child, but those who have been trusted with her care. (HB)

An Account of a Savage played at C-nova at 16:45 until 13 August: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/account-of-a-savage 

Definition of 'savage': http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/savage 

'Feral: The children raised by wolves': http://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/story/20151012-feral-the-children-raised-by-wolves

'Wolf boy is welcomed home by mother after years in the wild':http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/romania/1390871/Wolf-boy-is-welcomed-home-by-mother-after-years-in-the-wild.html

'6 cases of children being raised by animals': http://theweek.com/articles/471164/6-cases-children-being-raised-by-animals

'Feral Children: Lore of the Wild Child': http://www.livescience.com/41590-feral-children.html 

'FERAL CHILDREN': https://www.damninteresting.com/feral-children/

GREY MATTER // Spasm

Neurocriminologist Adrian Raine is a controversial figure in British science. He researches the biological basis of crime and asks questions that others shy away from. If you could use a brain scan to predict someone would become a psychopathic murderer, for example, shouldn’t you do that?

Raine’s thesis is the inspiration for Grey Matter, a play set a few years hence in a secure neurotreatment centre. This facility is where young men will find themselves if they fail their 18+ test – an assessment of their likelihood to commit murder, which is now compulsory since a mass school shooting. Scanned, probed and treated, they can get out if their test scores improve – but the prospects are grim in the desolate, violent environment, and meanwhile, their real lives outside move on without them. 

The parallel drawn by the show’s creators to today’s young offender institutions could hardly be clearer. 5000 young people are currently detained, often with little hope of rehabilitation and sometimes at the risk of extreme violence, as a Panorama programme earlier this year showed.

Yet, if there is a way to predict crime, do we have a moral duty to do so? The film Minority Report explored such questions, using the psychically-gifted precogs to enable authorities to catch perpetrators before crimes had been committed.

Raine’s precogs are the brain scans of offenders, on which he indicates enlarged or damaged areas he says could have predicted their behaviour. However, as many opponents point out, in modern social neuroscience, brain scans are notorious for their pretty colours and poor statistical significance.

Not even Raine’s discovery that his own brain had structures similar to his psychopathic test subjects made him abandon his perspective. His own wayward behaviours seemed to fizzle out in the environment of a new school at age 11.

But others may not be as lucky. Grey Matter shows us the possible risks we face if a government technocrat decides to adopt Raine’s theories to tackle crime instead of grappling with the much knottier societal problems that are its more likely roots.

- RM

Grey Matter ran at C Venues until August 29th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/grey-matter 

Adrian Raine’s work reviewed: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/may/12/how-to-spot-a-murderers-brain

Treatment of young offenders: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/13/young-offenders-institution-restraint-injuries

Panorama programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ymzly

The problem with trying to use brain scans statistically: http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v14/n5/abs/nrn3475.html

BRAIN MATTER(S) // Fen'Harel Theatre

Are you right-brained or left-brained? The two performers in the physical theatre production Brain Matter(s) take on the roles of one person’s interconnected brain as they struggle together to negotiate the challenges of life.

The idea that our brains' hemispheres take separate responsibility for emotion and rationality, confidence and doubt, anger and self-control, is one that brain-training gadgets and airport self-help books would love us to buy into. Brain Matter(s) deftly plays on these notions in the actors’ entertaining dialogue and choreography. The two halves are sometimes fitted snugly together as one, but at other times tumble, balance and fight, like an angel and devil warring for control of the one body.

There is some scientific basis to the belief that the two halves of the brain have different specialist functions. It first gained traction in the 19th century when French neurologists Marc Dax and Paul Broca realised that patients who had lost the ability to speak had all sustained damage to the left-hand side of their brain.

Broca’s area is still the name for the functional region in the brain’s left frontal lobe relating to speech production – although it’s sometimes found in the right frontal lobe of left-handed people, just to confuse anyone hoping for a clear-cut two-sided arrangement.

But this finding hints at the truly interesting aspect of brain hemispheres, and the focus of current neuroscience. Do the two halves process information differently? And how do they work together to produce all the complexities of human ability and behaviour? 

The staging of Brain Matters allows plenty of contemporary thinking about such issues. The female performer takes the more rational, ambitious persona, while the male performer is emotional and impulsive.

Another modern notion in neuroscience is that the specialism in our hemispheres gives us more ability to multitask. This production draws on all the performers’ skills to bring us new thinking on the old left-brain right-brain divide.

- RM

Brain Matter(s) ran at Venue 13 until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/brain-matter-s 

The myth of left and right brains: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-myths/201206/why-the-left-brain-right-brain-myth-will-probably-never-die

Marc Dax and Paul Broca and the discovery of the speech area of the brain: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17056493

Broca’s specialist language area explained: http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_10/d_10_cr/d_10_cr_lan/d_10_cr_lan.html

The advantages of having lateral speciality in your brain - multitasking: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1810119/

LAST DREAM (ON EARTH) / Kai Fischer

Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, made his pioneering solo flight on 12 April 1961. Last Dream (On Earth) uses words, imagery and live music to recreate his experiences of countdown, takeoff, weightlessness, and fiery but safe return. 

It’s a spectacular soundscape, and each audience member hears it immersively and intimately through their own individual headphones. But in painful contrast with Gagarin’s triumphant tale, a second story is also told– the desperate journey of refugees trying to reach Spain across the sea from Morocco in a child’s dinghy.

The two stories of peril, bravery, persistence and adversity intermingle and interlink creatively, and we have to ask: could I do this? What would it take to make me risk everything? And how are people changed by such experiences?

Even before their sea journey starts, the refugees in this story have already travelled thousands of miles, been subjected to indignities and uncertainties, and had to bargain, plead and pay.

Little wonder that in Britain, studies show higher rates of depression and anxiety among refugees compared to the national population, with those at highest risk being children, and women who have experienced abuse on their journey.

Figures show that of all people who migrate, asylum-seekers are the most likely to have multiple traumas. Experts have called for more support for those in the asylum system, but the intense politicisation of the issue continues to dog decision-making.

Astronauts, by contrast with refugees, are pampered travellers, rigorously trained for their journeys into such a risky environment. But the psychological impact of living in space is a very topical issue. While Yuri Gagarin spent just 108 minutes on the first spaceflight, a journey to Mars at current speeds would take nine months, one way.

A critical factor in maintaining mental health en route will be discovering how to improve astronauts’ sleep, while light and dark cycles disrupt their natural circadian rhythms.

And could there be genetic impacts on the human body from spaceflight? NASA hopes to answer that question through studying Scott Kelly, a veteran of a year-long space mission, and his identical twin brother, Mark. (RM)

Last Dream (On Earth) ran at Assembly Hall until August 28th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/last-dream-on-earth 

First Orbit, a film featuring audio and imagery of Yuri Gagarin and his mission: http://www.firstorbit.org/watch-the-film

Refugee and asylum seeker health issues: http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/health-of-migrants-in-the-uk-what-do-we-know/

Psychological wellbeing of refugees and asylum seekers: http://isp.sagepub.com/content/57/2/107.abstract

Refugee council facts on asylum: http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/policy_research/the_truth_about_asylum/facts_about_asylum_-_page_5

Medical monitoring on the International Space Station: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1025.html

Articles about Scott Kelly and his year-long space mission: http://www.nasa.gov/1ym/articles

MADE IN BRITAIN // Tez Ilyas

'Remember how no one got blown up at London 2012? I did that!' Comedian Tez Ilyas is referring to his Civil Service role on the Olympic security team. But he likes to leave no unmentionable unmentioned during his show Made in Britain.

Today Ilyas has left office life to pursue a career in comedy. His set explores what it means to be a British Muslim - in a post-Brexit period when anyone considered an outsider finds themselves living under an unprecedentedly critical spotlight.

Such hostility leads to long-term impacts on health and welfare. UK figures show that people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent experience much higher levels of some diseases, with scientists identifying experiences of racism and discrimination as crucial issues.

Nonetheless, recent opinion has shifted blame for community woes to minorities themselves. Ilyas gives short shrift to the former head of the Racial Equality Commission, Trevor Phillips, whose warning that Muslims were 'failing to integrate' played easily into the hands of a scaremongering press.

Ironically, it was the tragic Paris attacks that provided Ilyas with his first media break, a spot on BBC Radio 4's The Now Show that propelled him towards his current recognition. Now, he seems determined to use the limelight to highlight big issues that resonate individually with those who share a similar upbringing - but make everyone laugh.

Large families, parental pressures and arranged marriages are all personal experiences he chooses to talk about in this show – but llyas does not assume he is a spokesperson for the Asian community - indeed, he says there isn’t just one British Asian community. But his voice is significant in a country where research shows that direct and indirect racism damage children’s development, in ways that shape their entire lives. (RM)

Made In Britain ran at Pleasance Courtyard until August 28th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/tez-ilyas-made-in-britain 

Hate crime following the referendum: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-eu-referendum-racial-racism-abuse-hate-crime-reported-latest-leave-immigration-a7104191.html

Research by Yvonne Kelly, Professor of Lifecourse Epidemiology at UCL, into the impact of racial discrimination on child health: http://childofourtimeblog.org.uk/tag/racism/

PDF on UCL research into ethnicity and health: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/icls/publications/bn/ethnicity

Coverage of Trevor Phillips’ remarks about the Muslim community failing to integrate: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/10/uk-muslim-ghettoes-warning/

Has multiculturalism failed in the UK? Not really: article by Professor Anthony Heath: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/10/multiculturalism-uk-research

DREAMCATCHER // Dreamcatcher

From Shakespeare to Emily Bronte and beyond, many authors have given dreams the power to direct, challenge and reveal. In Dreamcatcher, young Indian playwright Kashyap Raja explores whether dreams may hold the key to unlocking your subconscious mind and your destiny.

The significance of sleep is a hot topic in modern science. Researchers have recently uncovered evidence that our brain has a plumbing network called the glymphatic system, which they believe may be responsible for clearing out dementia-causing toxins while we doze.

But dream analysis is still on the borderline with pseudoscience. Sigmund Freud’s idea that we act out our desires in dreams is undermined by a study showing that paralysed people dreamt about walking less than average, even though they all expressed a desire to regain that ability.

Carl Jung also taught that dreams are highly significant, containing truths and visions that emerge from different levels of our unconscious mind. This is the scenario that Dreamcatcher explores, with a machine that can look inside living people’s dreams, where, it’s revealed, you can always find your heart’s desire.

So does science support the notion that dreams can reveal the workings of the subconscious mind? Unfortunately neurobiological theory suggests that dreams emerge as we try to make sense of sporadic firings of nerves in our brain stem, which randomly activate memories. 

But scientists continue to explore what’s going on in the brain’s unconscious. The latest experiments show we can do complicated maths, as well as making rapid-fire judgements that guide our behaviour, without even knowing we are doing it. Is this how our destiny asserts itself?

The more that experts probe how our brains work, the more we realise how much processing is going on in our unconscious without our awareness. Currently, though, the suggestion that dreams carry great significance seems like wishful thinking. (RM)

Dreamcatcher ran at theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/dreamcatcher 

The discovery of the brain’s glymphatic system: https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/3584/scientists-discover-previously-unknown-cleansing-system-in-brain.aspx

Significance of sleep to brain cleansing: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/brain-may-flush-out-toxins-during-sleep

Neurobiological reasons for dreams: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2010/04/07/why-do-we-dream/#.V9m5A_krKUk

The power of our unconscious mind: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160315-the-enormous-power-of-the-unconscious-brain

SHIMMER SHATTER // Sofie Hagen

Sofie Hagen’s show, Shimmer Shatter, busts a few myths about introversion. It clearly indicates that being an introvert does not mean you are cold and closed-off. It doesn’t mean you won’t stand up and be very funny in front of an audience. And it doesn’t mean you are unable to tell people about the strangest and most personal aspects of your life, like the time you married a plank of wood and invited your school friends around as witnesses.   

What is true, though, is that inside an introvert’s brain particular things are happening. The neurotransmitter dopamine is to blame. It makes us all, whatever our personality, more talkative, alert and motivated to take a risk.  

But while extroverts love the thrill of chasing the release of more and more dopamine, for an introvert the joy of dopamine more quickly turns to overstimulation. In fact, as Dr Marti Olsen Laney has recently written, introverts favour the reward of a different neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. Very differently to dopamine, this chemical leads us to turn inwards, to reflect and focus, preferably somewhere calm.  

As an introvert, Sofie Hagen reveals that she favours spending periods of time at parties hidden away in the toilets. She says walls are good because they are a place where a person is not.  

Yet she is still a great people person, and the combination of comedy and honesty in her show has clearly struck a real chord with the audience.

At the moment it feels like introversion is getting all the attention it may never have wanted. Books like Quiet by Susan Cain, and her TED talk, present the introvert/extrovert divide as the most fundamental dimension of personality, with at least a third of people on the introverted side. 

Maybe the time of the introvert has come. With the help of high profile people like Sofie Hagen, perhaps introverts will get their time to speak – if the extroverts of the world can just stop talking for a moment. 

- Rebecca Mileham

Shimmer Shatter ran at Liquid Room Annexe until August 28th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/sofie-hagen-shimmer-shatter

Why extroverts and introverts are different: http://www.quietrev.com/why-introverts-and-extroverts-are-different-the-science/

BBC article on what makes someone an extrovert: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130717-what-makes-someone-an-extrovert

Dr Marti Olsen Laney’s book: https://www.amazon.com/The-Introvert-Advantage-People-Extrovert/dp/0761123695/?tag=quietrevol-20

Susan Cain’s TED talk The Power of Introverts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0KYU2j0TM4

EDINBURGH IN THE SHADOWS // Beattie & Scratchmann

‘Fear is a wonderful thing, in small doses. You ride the ghost train into the darkness, knowing that eventually the doors will open and you will step out into the daylight once again.’ This is author Neil Gaiman’s explanation of why we love a scary story, and it well described the experience of joining Alex Beattie and Max Scratchmann for their bloodcurdling show Edinburgh in the Shadows. 

The evening began with tales about the 16th-century Scottish obsession with witchcraft, which led to 4000 executions. James the Sixth was fanatical about catching witches, who he said went around gnawing dead children’s bones.

According to psychologists, terrible tales such as these give an audience the buzz of an intense shared emotional experience. In addition, the emotions of fear and pleasure create indistinguishable physical responses in terms of heart rate, breathing and pupil dilation. 

Another story from the shadows dealt with the grim life and times of Jessie King, baby farmer. In 1889 she appeared before the High Court in Edinburgh accused of the murders of children she had been paid to care for. Convicted and hanged, there was no such fate for her controlling husband.

I was reminded of the enormous appeal of the Horrible Histories series of children’s books, despite their branding as ‘glorifying and trivialising violence’ by some parents. Psychoanalysts believe we undergo the experience of a terrifying tale as a kind of safe catharsis of the horror of real life and its pressures.

But for their final trick, Beattie and Scratchmann had a different type of story – a cold-case murder. This was about George Meikle Kemp, a self-taught architect who gained the commission to design the Scott Monument, but then mysteriously drowned in the Union Canal.

Psychologist Les Lancaster believes the appeal of a mystery is intrinsic to the human mind, and part of our evolutionary heritage. He calls mysteries the ‘ultimate trail of breadcrumbs,’ inviting us to seek answers. This audience certainly enjoyed coming along for the ride. (RM)

Edinburgh in the Shadows ran until August 27th at Cowgatehead

Mark Griffiths on scary films: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-excess/201510/why-do-we-watching-scary-films

The enduring appeal of horror: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/halloween-horror-films-movies-scared-a6713446.html

Mysteries solved by Les Lancaster, professor of transpersonal psychology at Liverpool John Moores University: https://www.psychologies.co.uk/self/why-mystery-matters.html

HOW IS UNCLE JOHN? // Creative Garage

Abuse often comes shrouded in code. It comes in signs. Physical marks and distress, eyes that won’t meet yours, garbled speech, a sort of radical shrinking. There’s the less obvious, mental iterations. Rapid and sudden introversion, anxiety, depression: another sort of radical diminishing.

How is Uncle John? is the show that deals with these codes. It’s a duologue dealing with sex as power and economic capital. It’s a show dealing with sex trafficking. Even more particularly it’s a show dealing with a mother and daughter attempting to discuss- allusively, brokenly- the shattering effects of its aftermath and trying to piece together something approaching a new start.

“Uncle John” is a code and a sign. It’s a safe-phrase, used so Hope (the daughter) can alert her mother to danger. Even with all of its generic masculinity, it is an incantation that can’t banish away male violence. Anxiety permeates the whole tone and mood. There’s a mother's evident and obvious anxiety. There’s the anxiety of the vulnerable, exploited Hope. And there’s the pressing anxiety that no simple safe code can expel a world of violence meted out to the vulnerable. It’s a dramatic microcosm of the ‘real’ world, one in which the use of sex, force and power rule, and the shattered lives of the weak stand as testimony. (FG)

How Is Uncle John? played at Assembly Hall - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/how-is-uncle-john

Modern Slavery in the UK- http://www.unseenuk.org/

Understanding the Language of Narcissistic Abuse- http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/10/understanding-the-language-of-narcissistic-abuse/

Threatened Child (Extract)- https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8VIg9STL-wUC&oi=fnd&pg=PP11&dq=the+rhetoric+of+abuse&ots=KFwjjP6uwF&sig=k76qR5vNR9QzvZj6KEb6j90ytcc#v=onepage&q=the%20rhetoric%20of%20abuse&f=false 

Trafficking Survivor Stories- http://www.equalitynow.org/campaigns/trafficking-survivor-stories

F*CKING MEN // King's Head Theatre

Ten interlocking scenes present separate sets of lovers, each semi-ironically riffing on different ‘aspects’ of love. The platonic ideal. ‘Simple’ carnal lust. Tortured archetypes (‘Actor’ and ‘Journalist’) playing out and struggling with their desires, counter-desires and the simple physical fact of their bodies. 

F*cking Men is a reflection on what it means to live out what could queasily be termed the ‘gay male experience’ surrounding sexuality and perception, commitment and relationships. The title is something of a red herring. Whatever nudity there is remains secondary to the ideas surrounding the aforementioned themes. The bodies are used as props, showing the way that the relationships depicted subtly morph and modulate under external and internal pressures and strains.

The way that sex and body can be subtly weaponised is also deftly explored. It’s a messy, fraught exploration that deals with the ugly, implicit guilt and repression in denied sexuality.  The one scene without any sex (the meeting between ‘Journalist’ and ‘Actor’) is a meeting point between paranoia, fear and self-loathing, all focused on the body and messy sexual desire. Yet resolution isn’t found in the act of sex, either. As each scene shows, it is the sheer multiplicity of desire that makes it such a complex field of enquiry. Whether it is denied or temporarily fulfilled seems to make no difference. Resolution is as far away as ever.

- Francisco Garcia

F*cking Men played at Assembly George Square Studios - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/f-cking-men

Being Gay: Politics, Identity and Pleasure- http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/newformations/09_61.pdf

Homophobic? Maybe you’re gay?- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/homophobic-maybe-youre-gay.html

Evolution of Gay Theatre- http://www.juilliard.edu/journal/evolution-contemporary-gay-theater

Fringe: Queer Art & Film Festival- http://www.fringefilmfest.com/