#edfringe reviews

[literarylondonhq]

It’s getting closer!

The set! Well the #edfringe set has arrived, ready to be installed @thepleasance next week for the @edfringe. A remarkably easy build too! So we’re in London AND Edinburgh in August! Cheers! http://bit.ly/4cSeSd8

[twodoorsnotone]

ARE YOU A DOCTOR WHO FAN?? Alternatively, are you a STARKID FAN??? Did you watch and love A Very Potter Musical, and have you ever thought to yourself, oh boy, I wish there was something like this for Doctor Who?

Well OMG have I got NEWS FOR YOU! You sould definitely check out PROFESSOR WHERE !!!

It's super funny, chock full of references, and the cast and crew truly are passionate about this - I truly think they capture the chaotic but joyful energy of college-era StarKid lol.

If you're coming to EdFringe to see the Tin Can Bros' Solve It Squad anyway, you should definitely come along (trust me, we will all be going there too whilst there 🤭) if you'll be about between 19th-24th August, or donate to the Kickstarter to help this happen! (We also hope to have a cast album some time soon!)

More info and links etc below the cut!

OKAY THANKS FOR READING!!

Some highlights include - some familiar ex-companions doing their own version of Cell Block Tango, a gen Z fangirl companion, a very queer interpretation of the Doctor and everything really, a spiritual successor to Sarah Jane Smith, a Dalek singing an emotional ballad/rock anthem (somehow both), plot twists, and SO MUCH reversion of polarity...

elevator pitch - Professor Where is a parody musical based on Doctor Who! John B Stevens, disillusioned showrunner who revived the show, has grown tired of the same old plotlines and constant vitriol from fans. However, whilst writing his last season, John is transported into the very universe he is so desperately trying to escape. ENJOY SOME CHAOTIC REHEARSAL PHOTOS

Sounds fun right! It's organised and performed by students, and tickets will be only £11 (£9 concessions)! We are also doing a Kickstarter - if you can support us that would also be great to help cover the costs of our cast and crew staying in Edinburgh for the week.

I promise our songs are better than There's Always A Twist At The End!

Fundraiser - https://crowdfund.edfringe.com/p/taking-professor-where-to-fringe

Ticket link - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/professor-where

Review by a Doctor Who society in case you're interested (spoiler warning though!) - https://oxforddoctorwho-tidesoftime.blog/2024/05/10/meet-professor-where-sci-fi-show-reviewed/

Social media

Tiktok - @/Professor.Where https://www.tiktok.com/@professor.where?_t=8o6l8auUzVQ&_r=1

Twitter - @/prwheremusical (where many of the memes in this post originate) https://x.com/prwheremusical?t=5nQ2WRPtNMY2DoYp3TCdsQ&s=09

Instagram - @/technobabbleprods https://www.instagram.com/technobabbleprods?igsh=cXZjNTY2Z3V1ejhv

[ratwavegamehouse]

Hey I'm an award winning game designer. I was also an award winning comedian but the award was for best comedy show at a small Essex fringe festival that only ran once. I was a multi-match winning wrestler (I lost my last match, was supposed to win on the next show but then covid happened and I quit out of disillusionment). I also used to say Igot 5 stars at EdFringe if you add the three star review and the two star review together (to be fair it was a three star that read like a four, but also to be fair it was a two star that read like a one). Where did this start?

Oh yeah I'm one of the winners of the Diana Jones Emerging Designer Program. This is exciting news and means I'm getting sent to GenCon. I'll run some games there and also have something in sale at a stall (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say which yet).

I'm thinking of running Thirty Foes OR Once again we are defeated. Also weighing up Fear the Taste of Blood or maybe even Forecaster: The Body You Share (though not sure how I'd feel about playing a heavily plural game with strangers). If you know my work and have a clue what would he a good con game lemme know. I've not been a con person before, I've done Dragonmeet twice as a punter but that's it.

Also if this is how you've learned of me check out my work at https://ratwave.uk or my Itch

[showmethemon3y]

At this year’s Edinburgh fringe festival I saw 26 shows across 5 venues ( including a cabaret I performed in one night, and a show I was part of the creative team for). Since my first fringe trip in 2008, where my weekend was mostly made up of blagging my way into parties and guest spots, I have collected more varied experiences at the fringe than most.

In Fergus Morgan’s recent piece for The Stage Why is the Edinburgh Fringe flooded with solo shows about awful experiences? he laments an overwhelm with what he experienced this year as a “ surfeit of solo shows about awful things” and calls it a problem for the festival. And while I think it’s a fair point that many artists don’t consider enough what they are asking their audience to experience, I think it’s deeply unfair to frame this as entirely an artist’s problem, particularly to point the finger at solo shows.

Since before the pandemic there has been a growing demand for confessional “authentic” and “vulnerable” content - across not just solo theatre, but comedy, television and of course social media. It may be this is now on the turn after the late stages of a pandemic. However we are still amidst a mental health and financial crisis, without getting into the many horrific personal and political situations currently in the state of the world.

To be clear I don’t disagree with Fergus necessarily as far as his concerns about heavy content. In 2019 (remember we all thought was the worst year ever and couldnt’ wait for 2020…) I remember how excited I was to come to Fringe as a punter, to see as much as I could. But 3 days in of a 4 day trip, I was emotionally drained, having seen days of back to back shows about loss, assault, suicide, addiction, discrimination, and terminal illnesses (and some of these were not theatre but comedy shows …)

This was a time before content warnings were the norm. Sometimes the content was in the blurb, sometimes it was a surprise at the 40 minutes mark. I remember one evening, sitting on my own in a corner of the Summerhall courtyard, having cried so much I didn’t know if I could cry anymore.

I remember running into an artist I knew and trying to explain what I felt, and my takeaway was, well. I had booked these shows. But I hadn’t booked the shows because of themes necessarily. I had booked the shows because I had heard exciting things about them, and/or had loved the artists previous work.

In some cases I found myself seriously concerned about the artist’s wellbeing. I was left feeling like the trauma they were sharing hadn’t been processed yet. I was left sincerely worried about what the daily revisiting of that trauma (in the often brutal experience of bringing work to fringe) was doing to their mental health.

At other times I struggled to know what to do with how shows left me feeling, particularly when I hadn’t emotionally recovered from a previous show, or shows. The fringe is short on quiet calm spaces, not ideal in the aftermath of seeing traumatic work.

But - there is still a lot of lighter, funnier, left field and playfully unhinged work at the festival. By seeing them against the heavier content, all can become more dynamic. I appreciate as someone who isn’t a reviewer I have more agency in what I see, but also believe as a reviewer it must be possible to build a range of content and tone into the decision making of the order of what you see.

In terms of representing the audience experience, even as a die hard theatre buff, I can’t see someone deciding to book a full day of heavy content! (and they are also far less likely in one day to see six shows!)

As many of the replies on twitter in response immediately jumped on the issue of solo work, I wanted to speak to that too. In Alistair Smith’s recent piece The Dominance of the EdFringe solo show poses a problem for the touring market he raises concern about the disconnect between the prevalence of solo shows in the festival, against programming for receiving venues across the country.

Smith rightly identifies that economics are the primary reason for this, and questions the role of support for the festival and U.K. funding as whole. On the fringe end, the rising costs of accommodation, financial risk of making box office (during an ongoing cost of living crisis), the tight get-in times, and increasingly inexperienced technical staff, all go against mid-scale ambitious work. But I would take this further and look not just at funding structures for the festival, but for the changing face of national touring support.

I know many artists who were solo makers, who have had ambitions for making ensemble work for years now. But even outside of Edinburgh, finding the funding to do so has only grown more challenging. As mid-career makers what I am hearing (and experiencing ) is that we have never felt more precarious as freelancers, and we were pretty precarious to start with. So if it is indeed an issue for the festival, and the wider arts econoomy, that is issue that I want to see the industry ( that is meant to support us )addressing.

Add to this that fringe when I first came was much more of a mix of work that was developing itself alongside polished tour ready work,and now on the theatre end, at least - is first and foremost a showcase. None of this incentivises creative or financial risk, and the more people involved in your production, the more you have of both.

But what I would say in defence of my peers making work that centres difficult and even traumatic experiences, is this year I have seen a positive development in consideration of artists wellbeing. Wellbeing support is not only becoming common practice for work with traumatic themes, it's increasingly being built into most projects, a positive consequence of a number of artists modelling and making noise about centering care in artistic practice and rising awareness about mental health.

Far more artists these days have a healthy relationship to and awareness of therapy. I see far better general approach to physical wellbeing at the festival from performers. Far less people are drinking away their anxieties about the run (as used to be very common!) .

This is all a positive development worthy or recognition. I would even call it a generational shift. following from that, the next challenge I’m interested in at the festival, is how to hold audiences better after these shows, with that same sense of care. My hope is this raised sense of concern around wellbeing in the performing of work, will be the catalyst to that

[lovebooksgroup]

Edinburgh Magic Cabaret: A Spellbinding Experience in the Heart of the Capital @kevinquantum #CaledonianHotel #FringeReview @edfringe #FringeEdin #WhatsonEdi #Edinburgh #Fringe #Edinburgh Venue 206 #Magic #Comedy

X Facebook Threads Pinterest WhatsApp Print Review by Kelly Lacey Edinburgh Magic Cabaret: A Spellbinding Experience in the Heart of the Capital Venue: 206, The Caledonian Edinburgh – Versailles SuiteTime: Times vary, check the calendar for detailsDates: August 9-18Duration: 1 hour 10 minutesSuitability: 8+Country: United Kingdom – ScotlandGroup: KQ Productions Review: If you’re seeking…

[ivogfan]

Another 4-star review for Ivo! He’s nailing it.

[minitravellers]

Roger McGough’s Money-Go-Round | Review |Edinburgh Fringe

Roger McGough’s Money-Go-Round - 5 stars – an absolutely charming theatre experience for all the family @moneymusical @EdFringe

Roger McGough’s Money-Go-Round – 5 stars – an absolutely charming theatre experience for all the family. 5 – 21 August (not 10th or 17th) Assembly Rooms, Ballroom, George Street (Venue 20) Tickets from £13.50 Full, £12.50 concession and £12 pp for family of 4 https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on#q=%22Roger%20McGough’s%20Money-Go-Round%22 5 stars – an absolutely charming theatre experience…

[pickmeashow]

Daughter

Full disclosure: I have never written review before. OK, maybe some amazon reviews here and there, but I just thought this would be fun. Ratings are out of 5 stars.

Daughter  - ★★★★ Kings Hall Theatre - Venue 73 - Ticketing Info 12:30 pm Aug 1-5, 8-12, 15-19, 22-26

My flatmate, B, works for one of the PR companies so has got a lot of preview tickets she can give away. This is great, and so she’s sent me a whole list of shows and descriptions to pick out what I want to see. This was not one of those. This was an “I have a ticket for a show in 30 minutes if you can get here, wait I gave you the wrong venue, MOVE MOVE MOVE.” situation. I didn’t even know what show I was seeing.

As expected, everyone at CanadaHub is extremely polite and I went in with a warm fuzzy feeling. There was pop music playing as we filed in, surely this was going to be something feel good! Up Beat! Day time theatre/comedy! 

Adam Lazarus is The Father, and takes us in to an autobiographical comedy about fatherhood. He gets everyone in good humour talking about his daughter and how they play together. I relaxed into the seat, chuckling as he played both himself and his daughter in hypothetical conversations and dance battles.

Then there’s that moment where something seems a little off, a little glimmer of anxiety formed and knotted itself in my stomach. The discussion and performance of childbirth, where Lazarus comes across as an almost stereotypical confused but well meaning first time father, lets the comedy transform into and uncomfortable realism.

The narrative vignettes continue, always somewhat relatable initially. They’re easy to laugh at, if only to release some of that anxiety from the previous story. But gradually, the humour fades away and you feel like a man is standing on stage begging you to absolve him of all sins. Halfway through, I was actually gagging, convinced I was going to throw up. As the show rose to climax I was actually crying.

Going into this show I wanted to like this man, be it Lazarus or The Father (I honestly have no idea how true the stories are, and I hope I don’t give anything away by saying I really want them to be fiction). He had lost all sympathy and I felt only revulsion and pity, mostly pity for his family. He reminded me of an emotionally abusive boyfriend who could justify all his behaviour with a joke and some gaslighting.

This disgust on my part is what makes the show so successful. Lazarus draws you into his stories. He successfully paints each scene with a vibrant brush so that the audience is drawn into each story, and can see underneath the friendly suburban dad mask to what might be lurking underneath. As a woman, I found this all too familiar (remember the emotionally abusive boyfriend I mentioned before?), for men it might be a shocking look in the mirror to confront their own behaviour.

[fringebiscuit]

Review: Shakespeare's Schoolroom Live

Historical storytellers Tell Tale Present teamed up with Shakespeare’s Schoolroom & Guildhall to bring audiences a live and interactive museum tour at Edfringe 2021. Live-streamed from the historic building where Shakespeare himself attended school, this Zoom-based show successfully recreates the experience of an in-person tour, exploiting multiple camera angles to create an engaging piece of family-friendly, interactive theatre.

The set-up is simple: Tudor schoolmaster “Magister Jenkins” (played by the impressively knowledgeable Taresh Solanki) is aided by his cheeky sidekick, “Puck” (the endearingly silly Emma Sian Cooper), as they guide viewers through the museum, exploring curiosities large and small, from the wax tablets boys used to write their lessons, to the master’s chamber, decorated with previously hidden wall paintings. Along the way, virtual visitors are treated to oodles of fascinating trivia from Jenkins, whose inexhaustible knowledge covers everything from Tudor teaching methods to the origins of graffiti carved by students from centuries ago. Meanwhile, Puck provides welcome light relief, revelling in playing pranks when the schoolmaster’s back is turned.

Far from feeling like an inadequate alternative to the “real thing”, the overall tour feels cohesive and is well-timed. The expected “show-and-tell” segments are interwoven with interactive portions, in the form of playful pop quizzes — just be sure to brush up on your Latin conjugation skills beforehand!

No, an online museum tour is not going to move you to tears— let’s face it, few do— but Tell Tale Present have done an admirable job in translating the experience to the screen in such a way that the entire family can remain entertained throughout. As such, it’s a winning example of how digital theatre can enrich education.

Shakespeare’s Schoolroom Live was available online as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2021.

[imoma]

Then being asked where all thy beauty lies, Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes…

William Shakespeare

[nataliereviews]

Serena Flynn- Prune

52 Canoes, 5th August

Serena Flynn has chosen a very risky genre of theatre, but it definitely pays off! Bouffon is a lesser known clowning style that deserves more appreciation than it currently receives, especially when it’s performed as well as it is by Serena Flynn. Her character, Prune, is shrivelled and bitter after a relationship break down, but that doesn’t mean that she won’t have fun with her audience while she gets through the heartbreak! It’s easy to push audiences too far in this style of theatre, but Prune perfects the balance, keeping her character’s wildly grotesque and alarming nature but also enabling the audience to empathise with her. Go into her basement ready to play, and Prune will take you on a fun, eccentric journey! There really is nothing else anything like this at the fringe, go and support her (you can pay what you like), and give her the audiences she deserves.

[courtneyact]

Well that is @edfringe complete for another year! Lots of great reviews too! Thanks @storytellingprhq, @workingmgt and @underbellyedinburgh! Gonna miss my festival family and post show Christmas with Courtney. So many inspiring and entertaining shows! Go follow @theladyrizo @sixthemusical @hotgaytimemachine @dandydarkly @theladyrizo @tommylenk and book tickets to their shows! As for me...onto the next adventure, @dragworlduk tomorrow with @ciatelondon and then Barcelona tomorrow night for something fun you will find out about next week... (at Edinburgh, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/BmozT20H5C9/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=h37k5yajxsu

[poetryasf-ck]

Good Grief #9 - Hannah Raymond-Cox

Hannah Raymond-Cox grew up in Hong Kong and San Francisco, and has bounced around the UK since age sixteen. She studied International Relations and Modern History at St Andrews alongside her career in poetry and her work includes original plays, slam poetry pieces, and bespoke poems. Hannah won the Stanza Slam, was a National Poetry Slam Championships Finalist for Scotland, and performed on the BBC Stage at the Edinburgh Fringe. She has gigged everywhere from the Royal Albert Hall to a tiny dive bar in Hong Kong. She is currently touring Germany as an actor and munching her way round all the Bäckerei available. Her debut book, "Amuse Girl", comes out from Burning Eye Books next year.

Why, if there was a reason, did you write this poem/these poems?

I wrote the show because I’d been approached after a gig in Edinburgh (Other Voices) and was asked whether I had a full-length spoken word show they could come see. I didn’t, and I felt like… well, why not challenge myself not only to do more long-form work, but share my diasporic story? Writing to time of 3 minutes where you’re essentially doing a persuasive monologue means that nuance and context is harder to achieve, and I wanted to frame my story not as one of moments of fear and loss but one of longterm survivorship.

Why, upon writing this poem/these poems, did you perform them?

I think that there was a sense that for me - it was important to share what abuse and the aftermath of abuse/loss looks like on a practical level, in a way that was performing victimhood but as a part of a larger queer diasporic narrative. For the audience I feel like a lot of us experience grief and loss and loneliness and I wanted to connect with others like me - to say hey, you are seen. Also, it was written to be performed. My background as an actor and spoken word poet rather than a page poet means that to me, some work is explicitly created in the medium for a reason.

How does performing this piece change how you look at what happened to you?

Not really - I feel like a lot of the changing happened during the writing process. It took me the best part of 9 months to write the show, and during the last 4 of those I was working with my director and turning in fortnightly revisions. When you’re editing hardcore like that, the preciousness and connexion to the trauma has to take a backseat in service of a good story for an audience that you can deliver consistently every night.

How do you separate artistic performance from lived personal experience?

I feel like most conscientious poets I know are aware that we perform authenticity, and that means that lived experience gets condensed and presented in a way that makes an impact. My lived experience wouldn’t rhyme, it’d have way more hesitations, deviations, and repetitions, I can’t present an hour of it and go The End - it’s a show. No one piece of work can fully articulate the constant complex changes in how I feel about what I’ve lived.

Do you find yourself affected negatively by performing this piece? If so, how do you look after yourself?

I was terrified the first time I shared it - the sense of ownership was huge, and it took a great deal of trust to hand over my script to someone, and the first time I performed it was also huge. But I now treat it like a job to a certain extent - if I were being triggered or emotionally tired out more than usual in the course of a normal acting job then I’d have had to go back to the editing table and see where I could build in safety measures for myself. For me, poetry is inherently performative, and having years of acting under my belt helps me delineate performance emotion from my own mental state. Writing helps delineate too, like POLARIS’ format of “snapshots” and “scene” literally being said helps me reset my breathing and emotional state between scenes and reminds me and the audience that this is all constructed. I’m not Brecht, but I borrow bits...

Do you practice any aftercare after performing this piece (either for yourself or audiences)? (E.g., talking to audience members who are upset, taking some time out after your performance to ground yourself, ensuring you perform in places where you feel safe etc.)

Personally, I go for a pint with friends who enjoyed the piece. I warm down the same way after my spoken word show as my traditional theatre work. If I weren’t able to perform the piece without touching the unsafe parts, then I wouldn’t perform it. I feel like part of my job as an artist is to be able to reproduce the same experience every show for an audience… The great thing about the conventions of theatre and spoken word theatre means that the safe space notion is a compact made as soon as an audience enters a space with clear performer space vs audience seating. I think it does a disservice to say that as artists we need to practice aftercare for an audience - that’s not a responsibility of the performer to police or preempt reactions. Triggers and grief are so personal that what would you warn for? Frequently, trigger warnings beyond the vaguer “mature themes” remove nuance and subtlety from a piece, I’ve found. I’d rather challenge an audience that let them self-select out with my own interpretation of concerning parts of the show...

Do you do any content warnings for this piece? Why?

I do but I keep them generic! Considering the show sits in the realm of spoken word theatre, warnings are on all marketing materials and are necessarily programmed in to the theatres’ booking systems. It’s an important part of marketing a show - to know your audience and your demographic targets. I also definitely don’t want any kiddos walking into a show created for a more mature audience. POLARIS’ content warnings are: 15+, strong language, and mental health themes. Any more than that and I feel like we’re stepping into the realm of spoiler territory and nuance removal, and I feel like I’ve given enough information to the audience in other material. That material includes biography, reviews, the short and long copy for flyers and websites, the visual design of the poster itself, and more.

Does the artist owe any kind of protection or safeguarding to their audience?

In a vacuum/ideal world, the performer has a duty to one thing and one thing only: making the best piece of art they can, which says something, and communicating that something to an audience in a reproducible and safe manner for themselves. They are not there to warn the audience, make the audience feel comfortable, or look after the audience’s reactions to their work (unless directly funded to produce media that does so).  We can't cotton-wool art because it's an important medium for raising awareness, for reflecting life back at us, and for representation. Other things too, but they're less pertinent to the conversation and a medium associated with telling a “truth” to a “power”. Triggers can come from many things, not just things that can be classed as art - we as a society don’t expect them elsewhere, what makes spoken word different?

I think that the warnings in front of a typical show (eg. strobe lights, mature themes) work well enough now. We have content warning systems for some arts (cinema and video games really stand out for the level of detail available pre-purchase) but almost nothing for others, particularly books and theatre. For cinema and videogames, solitary and personal media, that makes sense to provide a measure of information to consumers who may have the ability to pause the medium or want to allow kids to watch material beyond the suggested age rating. Theatre and books, which performance poetry most closely resemble, do not warn beyond blurbs on covers or through supplementary materials used primarily for marketing. They allow for exploration, challenging those who engage with the work in a different way.

Part of the problem with asking the performer and writer to provide content warnings and/or aftercare for the audience is that the performer/writer is usually a) too close to the work (in poetry, the content’s usually personal in nature), b) busy pre-show and post-show working on performance itself and may not want to break character of “performing”, c) drained/busy at the end of performing, and d) the only person doing everything associated with that performance! A small example: halfway through my month-long run of POLARIS at Edfringe 2017, a man who’d watched me perform cornered me immediately after and asked me to talk through his reactions to the show with him, then and there. I was in the middle of set take-down, turning around the space, was tired and mildly out of breath, was emotionally resetting from the show, and was absolutely not in the right space for the conversation he wanted to have. I'm not a psychiatrist, and I don't know about any trauma other than my own. I was one person, doing the work of 5, and in that moment, I wished desperately for another person to manage audiences - with funding, of course, that a spoken word solo show doesn’t have.

Additionally, you don’t approach an actor at a traditional theatre stage door and expect a verbal warm-down, nor do you corner a writer of a book you like and ask they help you with the themes/your reaction to their work. Not to go all “Death of the Author” on this, but like - people have approached me post-show with a myriad of different interpretations on “emotionally fraught” sections. They ranged from reasonable (depression) to out of the blue to me (eating disorders) - even with my imagination on full blast I could not have predicted their personal reactions to the work. If I listed every element of the show I could think of, I still would have missed a content warning that occurred to someone somewhere. The nature of the piece is that - as adults seeing a show on queer themes and mental health, the obligation is on the person who’s chosen to consume that media to decide whether it’s appropriate or healthy for them.

If the piece has funding beyond the usual spoken word operation, in which the poet is performer, marketer, director, producer, and front of house, then there are more options. It could be good to have content warnings but in a way that isn’t visible to people unless they want to see them (so a visible warning saying ‘content that may be disturbing, ask a member of staff, or similar). That would keep both camps (the ‘I need to knows’ vs ‘I don’t want any spoilers’) happy, I reckon. Box office/FOH would be provided with a list, which the performer/producer draws up prior to the tour as a part of the tour pack. There could also be further supplementary materials, like a website for content warnings. A bigger budget, like for Trainspotting: Live! enables you to do fun things like have scratch cards with content warnings that you physically have to work for to reveal… Or you could try and set up a nationwide age rating scheme like for video games and films, but that requires maintenance and a solid review board, neither of which the spoken word scene seems likely to be able to do.

In conclusion, I think that if you engage in art then you're bringing yourself and your experiences and your worldview to it: the artist can't control if those things include triggers beyond a typical age rating and “mature themes”. So if, for example, extensive talk of food triggers you then do your due diligence pre-show and at worst, don't come - it's in the synopsis of POLARIS, on flyers, on the website, and more marketing media. If you're triggered during the show then that genuinely sucks but as far as I'm aware, it's unfortunately part of having dealt with trauma. As for post-show, well, the BBC provides links to Samaritans and other organisations at the end of their programmes. I’d rather put the onus on the audience to find ways of processing art that work for them, and encourage them to take responsibility for their reactions.

Do you believe writing about areas such as grief, loss or trauma is a form of healthy catharsis or memorialisation?

I’m not qualified to answer this question, like, at all. I’m not a therapist working directly with the person who’s going through it. So...it depends on the individual. Writing can be healthy! Or it can lead to fixation.

What kind of warnings signs would you point out to someone new to poetry or performance who was performing about their traumas?

I suppose I’d ask the person to ask themselves why they’re doing it, if they’ve got another safe place to process trauma, and to gently caution them from using poetry as a form of therapy. If you find performing the poems trigger you or leave you mentally unsafe, don’t do it. Work on editing, work on the craft, and by understanding how best to say what you want to say, you can create distance and reproducibility for performing poetry.

[lovebooksgroup]

Don Quixote: A Disappointing Take on a Classic #FringeReview @edfringe #FringeEdin #WhatsonEdi #Edinburgh #Fringe #Edinburgh Venue 20

X Facebook Threads Pinterest WhatsApp Print Review by Kelly Lacey Don Quixote: A Disappointing Take on a Classic Venue: 20, Assembly Rooms – BijouTime: 14:30Dates: August 9-18, 20-25Duration: 1 hourSuitability: 16+ (Guideline)Country: FinlandGroup: Red Nose CompanyWarnings and Additional Info: Nudity Review: Don Quixote by the Red Nose Company is a bold attempt to bring a comedic and…