This first foray by Jess Thom into performance making scooped the 2014 Total Theatre Emerging Artist award at this summer’s Edinburgh Fringe. The show develops from her successful work in blogging and publishing that has made her alter ego, Touretteshero, a much loved spokesperson for the illness. And it’s an illness that, despite its fascinating pull, is widely misunderstood and here takes centre stage.

In this two hander Thom, playing herself, sets out to inform and entertain about the uncomfortable and inspiring realities of her life living with Tourettes, using her illness as both subject and medium. Continuously (and yet always surprisingly) affected by a variety of physical and verbal ‘tics’, the performance has the propensity at any moment to veer off into uncharted territory by the wild riffs that overtake Thom’s body. Keeping us (roughly) on track is the job of onstage partner ‘Chopin’ (Jess Mabel Jones), the first in what becomes clear is a host of offstage supporting cast whose constant presence is necessary to keep Thom safe and functioning.

The show powerfully portrays the realities of living with this debilitating illness, most engaging and affecting because so much of it is so funny. There are certainly many total theatre languages in play: Chopin animates onstage devices to illustrate memories, anecdotes and fantasies by playing with puppets, absurd and giant props, and handheld lighting effects that make the most of an eclectic set (which, the pair admit, is made up from a random list of items picked by Jess during the rehearsal process). Improvisation plays a key part, with a couple of improvised quizzes making the most of the brilliantly absurd shifts in subject that the tics can direct. The show is structured meta-theatrically, exploring the experiences (both good and bad) that spurred Thom to make it. These explanations bring to life very straightforwardly the realities of her experiences – both in their accounts (living with constant care day and night, being able to hold down a job) and through direct, uncontrollable demonstration (slapping herself repeatedly, painfully, in the face as she tries to eat a bowl of strawberries). It is an uncomfortable truth that it feels deeply courageous to show, unflinchingly, the realities of living with disability live on stage.

There are two elements that set the production apart though. Jess’s verbal ticks are outbursts of uncontrollable lyrical mashup, slamming together celebrity, profundity and mundanity to make images and stories that are hilarious and often inspired. Secondly the inescapable liveness of this performance: we are not only backstage, we are all on stage, living with Jess through every glorious, difficult minute. No illusion and no script could withstand the unremitting realness of the Tourettes symptoms whose presence on stage is shared with grace and warmth by both performers – it’s hard to imagine a more fitting form for Touretteshero’s work.