It is so refreshing, so enlightening to encounter a piece of theatre that is important among the swathes of comedy that engulf the Edinburgh Fringe each year. Jenna Watt’s Flaneurs is just that, a piece of theatre that is important – it is highlighting something bad about the world and is trying directly to change it.
Flâneurs is about an unprovoked attack that happened to Jenna’s friend Jeremy while bystanders looked on and offered no help. It explores the bystander effect which suggests that the larger the crowd the less likely it is that anyone will help a person in distress.
With just herself, a projector and a recorded interview with the police, Watt takes us through the places she loves in Edinburgh and the places that her friends have been attacked. She explores the phenomena of psychogeography, the residue of negative feeling that is left in the place where something bad happens. She asks us what we would do if we were a witness to a violent act. The style is didactic and her direct address enables her to connect to the audience with powerful effect.
There are a few moments that don’t work so well. Watt spends quite a lot of time dragging the projector around the stage, which feels a little awkward and unnecessary. The structure too begins to drag towards the end as we move from talking to projector to interview and back again. I did get the feeling that, although what she is saying is important, it would be possible for her to say it in a slightly more interesting way theatrically.
However, it is Watt’s gentle yet earnest delivery and the immediacy of the subject matter that keeps us engaged. We feel what she is saying needs to be said; it happened recently to her friend, and the genuine care she has for him is exceptionally heart-warming. I began to think of friends of mine who have been attacked, of the psychogeography of places that I know, and how I may do something nice within them to reclaim them as Watt suggests.
This is important theatre that has a more vital social function than any other piece I have seen at this years Fringe. At the end Watt asks us all to take a badge, as a symbol that we will help another person who may be in distress, that we will support each other. I’m still wearing it now, and I will do my best to honour the message of this vital theatrical experience.