As we enter the space, a woman is standing on the empty stage. She’s fairly young, tall, slim, pale skinned, auburn haired, attractive in an understated way. Dressed in a short floral dress, bare-legged, no obvious make-up. If we had to be more specific, we’d say that she looks like a typical educated, personable young woman from the English middle classes. She looks out at us, returning the gaze. This is me, her posture seems to say. Just me – here I am. As the doors close, the recorded voice-over starts: ‘I’ve never told anyone this story…’

It purports to be a love story, although always with the edge that something is going to happen – it’s clearly not going to end in happily-ever-after. There’s a section of movement work that follows the words about meeting, first date, and falling in love unexpectedly. Soft, sensuous, flowing – reflecting the words. This is the pattern set up: text, then movement in response – a kind of call and response. There are also words spoken live – dancer/choreographer Zosia Jo’s own writings, adding a poetic element to the more prosaic voice-over text

The affair progresses, and the movement changes to something more earthy and robust. She has, says the recorded voice ‘a proximity crush’ and she waxes lyrical on his tight torso, glimpsed as he pulls up his T-shirt a little, absentmindedly. She moves down to floor level and stands, again and again. ‘I guess this is why they call it falling’.

There is also (recorded, but original compositions) music: Ry Cooder-style slide guitar – for a moment, evoking Wim Wenders’ Paris Texas. Whether deliberate or accidental, this is a nice touch. This shifts into full-on raunchy rock, as we learn that the object of our character’s desire is the frontman in a band. Standing at the front, gazing at hm adoringly, she turns around and sees that she is not the only one. The room is full of adoring female eyes. Doubts creep in, and there are a number of alarm bells ringing. ‘A text can change your life’ is said more than once. We start to construct narrative, to guess where this is going.

The piece seems, for a while, to be stuck in a bit of a groove, with the structure  of movement illustrating the text progressing. But just when I start to feel a little bored, wondering why I’m being told this everyday story of a normal, youthful relationship with its ups and downs and ins and outs, it changes. There’s a punchline, and it comes as the shock it is intended to be.

The show ends as it begins, with the performer standing calm and upright in the space, watching us – although the story we have heard has changed the relationship we have with her.

It is a story of love going badly wrong that is, sadly, timeless. It is a story that the creator describes as ‘both true and untrue’. The recorded text is based on verbatim interviews with a number of women about their relationships with men. I find the structure of the piece a little formulaic, and feel that there could be more development (in this or in future work) and exploration of how text and movement can interact in a more challenging, less illustrative, way.

But this is an important story that needs to be told, and although the show  has flaws, it is good to see dance employed in the telling of important verbatim stories.

There’s a brand new circus venue at the Edinburgh Fringe! No, I don’t mean Circus Hub (although that too). What I’m talking about is Big Sexy Circus at Fountainbridge. A large site, with two tents – which they miraculously managed to erect and rig in the wind and rain of the Edinburgh summer. It can be done! An outdoor bar, and tables bearing parasols. A couple of food stalls. At the gates, a couple of stilt walkers in Regency garb greet us. As we sip our pre-show drinks, a pair of smiley performers do a pretty good acrobalance set, standing on tables, plinths and walls. And – oh look! – high above us a wire-walker is moving from an aerial rig up, up, up and over the larger of the two tents.

I’ve come to see Hitch! which is presented in the smaller of the tents, with international spectacular Wings running concurrently every night in the large tent. But as it turns out, all of us here for Hitch! have a three-for-the-price-of-one ticket, with an invitation to stay for Swing Circus and the late-night Big Sexy Circus Cabaret. The ethos of the space seems to be about sharing and supporting, so it feels appropriate to round up the whole evening as one experience.

Hitch! I’ve somehow managed to miss at both the Brighton Fringe 2014, and this year at Jackson’s Lane. So I’ve had it on my list for a long while. It was worth the wait – a really engaging and entertaining circus show. As the name implies, the piece is an homage to the films of Alfred Hitchcock. A number of circus acts inspired by, or adapted to, the theme are mulched together with an overarching, rather camp, aesthetic. The men are, for the most part (more on that later!) in sharp suits, white shirts and ties; the women cool Grace Kelly blondes or dark-haired vamps. There’s a band too – always great to have live music with circus, and what we get here is a nice mix of original compositions and clever musical references to the classic Hitchcock soundtracks, all done very nicely (the Psycho screeching violins are delivered in a short burst, just enough for us to get the reference without over-egging the cake). On a beguiling mix of guitar, bass, vocals and laptop are the very versatile Tom Elstop and Tia Kalmaru (who, rather marvellously, looks like an escapee from 1927 theatre company, with her Louise Brooks bob and her straight-up-and-down black dress with a little collar).

When you think about it, Hitchcock’s themes lend themselves very well to circus. Rope. Vertigo. Stagefright. Birds. As the hour whizzes by, we ricochet from one film to another.  Spellbound in the form of a very nice, laconic solo trapeze piece by Tom Ball; then Rear Window with our compere, George Orange Fuller, now changed into pyjamas, wheeling himself round the space in a wheelchair, leg in a cast, binoculars in hand. ‘Grace Kelly’ appears, and there is a lovely duet – sitting somewhere between contact impro, acro and clown – on, around over and under the wheelchair. Stagefright is hoop – with a great mix of controlled hooping and a teasing spoken text by the mesmerising Anna Sandreuter. The Birds is, of course, an aerial act – silks, by the feisty bird-girl Aislinn Mulligan. As is (later) Topaz, with the multi-talented Sandreuter back on corde lisse. There’s plenty of ground action too, and the relationship between ground and air is used very well in both a 39 Steps/North by Northwest man-fight scene, which moves from ground to air (the trapeze again, but this time a duet), and a mock-tentative slack rope act by George Orange Fuller channelling Vertigo. More Vertigo in a marvellous Hitchcock Blondes scene, which sees performer Joe Wild relieved of his dapper brown suit and re-dressed in frock and blonde wig, whilst lip-synching to the soundtrack of what I assume is an interview with Kim Novak about the deception at the heart of the film’s plot. He makes a very lovely Madeleine – and is joined onstage by the other gentlemen of the cast, showing off their legs…

The team of circus artists, physical theatre performers, and musicians all work together to create a winning ensemble work. It isn’t deep or profound, it doesn’t challenge any boundaries – it’s solid skills and sound entertainment delivered with panache, and that’s good enough for me.

After a short break, it’s back in the tent for Swing Circus. Which is exactly what it says on the can – swing dancing and circus acts. The dancing element is some pretty nifty swing / lindy hop from two couples. The circus acts include a unicyclist / juggler called Sam, who has a lovely way about him, a long, lanky boy with an innocent gaze held behind geeky black-rimmed glasses. He’s dressed as a waiter, and his finale is a cycle ride over a row of wine glasses. A girl in a dress with Charleston style fringing delivers a clever and cheery mix of juggling/object manipulation and dance/gentle contortion. There was a drag king club juggling act too. But it’s not all juggling – there’s aerial too. There are times when the dancers and the circus performers come together, demonstrating the obvious connection between aerial lifts in swing and acrobalance. A good-time show that does what it sets out to do well.

I stay on for some of the following Big Sexy Circus Cabaret, which (as is the wont with late night circus cabarets) focuses on the comic and the burlesque. I catch a horrifying nail-through-nostril to hand-in-rabbit-trap sideshow act; a very odd sort-of juggling act employing large yoga balls and audience participation; and a kind of synchronised swimming on silks comic aerial act. All fine and dandy, for what it is. But by now my concentration levels have dropped, and I feel it’s best to quit while I’m winning. I sneak away into the night, out through the gate, up the road past the re-sited Ladyboys, and back into the Edinburgh night.

Entering the dim space, there appear to be two sculptural forms. To one side, towards the rear, is a tall metal stepladder, the top end of its steps disappearing into a kind of open-ended cocoon. To the other side, towards the front, is what seems to be a hulking rusting statue. The statue is lit in an intense beam of light, and we see that it is made from old and battle-scarred leather. A dull electronic drone intensifies, and the distorted echoes of mortar bombs sound. a hand emerges from what we now see is a battered old great-coat. The hand is pale, naked, and as it emerges from the coat sleeve it twitches unbearably. It looks raw, exposed against the rough leather. A second hand appears. Now both are twitching and flicking, the only signs of life in the great mass of leather, lit by the beam of light. Next, a head. A mostly shaved head – although there are two strips of hair, a kind of mohawk strip on top, and a Coco the Clown semi-circle of hair round the back. The head is tortoise-like as it pushes itself forward. The eyes are large and look out to us, then dart to each side. It is a face that is simultaneously monstrous and utterly human. As the sound grows ever more chaotic and intense, the bass notes of the thudding bombs resonating through our bodies, the body that we are watching emerge from its protective shell becomes, part by part, fully animated. Eventually – and it is after a long time, a mesmerising sequence of  precise physical action – the man emerges, shrugging off his great-coat, and standing to face us.

As the piece progresses, we witness a stunning evocation of the experience of post-traumatic stress syndrome – specifically, that experienced by  soldiers who have survived war. It’s a completely word-free piece – everything we experience is in the performer’s brilliant physicality, the visual landscape (defined by beautiful lighting design by Alberto Santos Bellido), and the intense, multi-layered soundscape (by Guy Veale). All merge beautifully to create an extraordinary and shocking language of trauma. We are taken right into the heart of the soldier’s experience.

The heart of darkness is always present, but there are variations in tone. Sometimes our soldier laughs wildly, sometimes he shakes and sobs. There’s a break in the intensity of the soundscape of distorted drones, bomb blasts, and machine-gun fire for a blast of danceband music. ‘Home Sweet Home’ croons the singer on the scratchy recording, as the soldier sits on his chair and sways, swigging brandy from a bottle.

At other points in the piece the movement work is less mimetic, more hardcore corporeal. Often, a mimetic movement morphs into an abstracted choreography. For example, as he takes on a long cardboard cone onto his arms, playing with the suggestion that they could be either prosthetic limb or machine gun. Later, a second cone is added, and he stands tall and strong, and spins his arms in all directions, a cyborg powerhouse, a killing machine. The stepladder takes on an ominous, mythical role. It is edged around, approached, leapt away from as if  it was burning hot. It is an object of fascination, desire and terror.

Al Seed’s Oog comes almost a decade after The Factory, and is described as a companion piece to that seminal work. In between, there has been an extraordinary body of work in many different forms and genres – some with and some without words – crossing the divides of dance, theatre and performance art. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve seen by this extraordinarily talented artist – but The Factory and now this new work Oog, twin towers of  terror  and despair,  I love to bits. If you have any interest at all in physical theatre, in theatre without words; or if you perhaps doubt the power of word-free theatre to tell stories, then this is the show for you.

I left, to steal a metaphor, shell-shocked. An extraordinary piece of work.

Ah, the lure of the silver screen! Close Up starts with slow motion, Black and white film of diving and tumbling bodies, enormous limbs and torsos travelling across the large screen to the rear of the performance space, which is set up dance-style at floor level – no staging, tiered seats rising up on three sides. Real live bodies enter from around and behind the screen, unlit other than by the light of the screen, crossing the stage in low rolls and dives and scuttles.

The onscreen images dissolve and instead a spotlight highlights a man in a black suit and white shirt, wearing black and white spats. His silhouette is cast upon the screen in the full moon circle of the spotlight. The tone shifts, the man speaks. He introduces himself: he’s Dan from Melba, and he’s a hand-balancer. He proves this with a very beautiful and skilled hand-balancing sequence. And adds a dash of the Donnie Darko theme on guitar…

The four performers take turns on the mic, reciting a litany of action verbs ‘to jump, to tumble, to rock, to roll’ as they leap and fly across the floor. They run into the audience with their mics, chatting and flirting with audience members – getting close to people, you could say. Lauren is close to me, sitting on a man’s lap, having a photo taken with him. When she’s not seducing people, she’s challenging the feminine stereotype by basing not one not two but three other people, or by performing a stunningly strong corde lisse act – the free-hanging rope being more closely associated with male performers, women traditionally going for silks or trapeze. The other two performers on stage and screen are Lewie who is an ace hula-hooper, amongst other talents, and Todd, who is a Chinese Pole performer. The show is punctuated with autobiographical details, and a kind of demystifying of processes: ‘This is one of those moments called a transition, when we need to put up the Chinese Pole’ says Todd ‘ So I’m going to put on my Pole clothes, which I need to protect me from skin burns… but this jumper is just an ordinary jumper, from H&M I think. They’re not sponsoring us…’ He then moves into a breathtaking, perfectly times Chinese Pole act.

Elsewhere, we get more evidence of the extraordinary skills and acts we’ve come to expect from Circa. My favourite section starts with a row of chairs. There’s a lovely playful scene as four people are brought up from the audience to sit upright and still as the four performers move around and over them and the chairs, a beautiful exploration of what it is to perform and what it is to witness, to really look. Then, each performer takes his or her audience partner by the hand and invites them into a gentle waltz. All lovely stuff. Partners are returned to their seats, and the chairs continue to play their part, becoming a great tower climbed up and balanced on – a great merging of object manipulation and equilibrist skills.

Meanwhile, we return now and again to the screen. There’s close-ups of taut stomachs beaten percussively with fists, and a kind of time-lapsed animation of Lewie hooping, as live she takes more and more colourful hoops onto her gyrating body.

Close Up is a show about the gaze; about looking from near and from far; about seeing and being seen. But dramaturgically speaking, it’s not quite there yet. Of course the skills are amazing – this is Circa, world leaders in contemporary circus. And much of the content of the piece is in place, and interesting. Many of the set pieces incorporated are really beautiful, and I love the play with audience, the exploration of ‘near’ and ‘far’.  I’m not so keen on the confessional-autobiographical moments, nor on the deconstructing commentary on circus. Both of these things have been done better by others. The main criticism, though, is of the film work, which seems so crucial to the content of Close Up – the gaze, the mediated image – yet is just not that interesting, for the most part. I suppose we are all so used to slow-mo action and close-ups of acrobats’ or dancers’ body parts used in advertising that it takes something radically different to really grab our attention. That said, the ending  – which involves the screen – is wonderful!

I suppose I am also, in my criticisms, influenced by the experience of seeing two of these four performers very recently in the other Circa show that premiered this year: What Will Have Been, which even on the occasion of its premiere was so wonderful, so perfectly formed, that it would be beyond all reason if director Yaron Lifschitz and the ensemble could have pulled off a second perfect show within a few months. I am also reminding myself that I had reservations about Circa’s Beyond on its first outing, and on seeing it a second and third time over two years watched it evolve into one of the best-ever Circa shows. The note here is that with Circa, as with all of us, some shows arrive almost fully formed on their first outings, everything slipping into place effortlessly; and with other shows there is a longer gestational process before the piece is at its best. This is the premiere of an adventurous show, involving a number of elements beyond the regular circus tool-box (moving image, spoken text, audience participation) and it will grow and grow, I am sure.

Of course, even a work-in-progress from Circa is heads above most circus shows out there. The full house of Underbelly’s big purple cow on the opening night of the Fringe is ecstatic to have been invited into this very special world of supreme talent and stimulating ideas, and gives the fab four performers the ovation they deserve.

The politics of gender – and specifically transgender issues – are a hot potato right now. There’s a lot of media attention on high-profile transgender women – Caitlyn, Kellie – with endless interviews, articles, speculations and pronouncements from the women themselves and from their family, friends and enemies. Meanwhile, within the tight enclaves of radical feminism, there’s something of a raging battle between some so-called cis-women (women born as women who choose to identify as women) and some transgender women (not all of whom accept that label), about issues such as the terminology used to describe people, who is the most oppressed, and whose needs are greater. Too often the arguments are limiting, the assumptions made unhelpful… Some have wondered whether the feminist agenda is being hijacked by people who are coming from a position of male privilege and thus used to dominating the conversation and getting their own way. It is with some wariness that I – who define myself as a feminist and who as a child rejected my assigned female gender, becoming a ‘tomboy’ who was delighted when the local shopkeepers called her ‘sonny’ –  enter the affray.  So this is the baggage I’m carrying on this subject as I enter the theatre to see Trans Scripts – the first play(as playwright) by Paul Lucas, who comes to the job with a wealth of experience as a producer.

What Trans Scripts has to offer is many things. First of all, it’s a very good piece of verbatim theatre – a great hour of engaging and enchanting performance. Six transgender women’s stories are told by six performers. We do not know if any of the women are telling their own story, or if they are all acting. We do not know which of the actors are transgender and which, if any, were assigned the female gender at birth. This is theatre, and the point is the stories, which shine through with strength and pride. Trans Scripts does not present some sort of universal, composite picture of transgender issues. By focusing on six distinct personal stories, it shows that there are as many ways to be a transgender woman as there are transgender women.

So, meet the girls: Sandra, Luna, Tatiana, Zakia, Josephine, and Eden. They represent not the full spectrum – that would be impossible – but a spectrum of transgender women’s views.

Sandra, played by the legendary Capernia Addams, is the play’s mother figure; the glue that holds it all together. She’s from Staten Island, and her story starts  in childhood with a desire to steal the damask cloth beneath the family parakeet’s cage to make herself a skirt. Her journey to become the strong and noble older woman she now is takes her far and wide, and yet always circles around Staten Island. It’s a massive challenge to see off the hurt of being ignored by people she’s known all her life who refuse to acknowledge her as a woman, but she sees it through. Once, she was sent to counselling. Now she is a counsellor. Throughout the piece, Sandra is often to be found with her hand on another woman’s shoulder, offering support as their story emerges.

Luna is a tall, skinny woman with afro hair, big eyes, and lips painted a chalky beige, in sharp contrast with her dark skin. She’s punky and streetwise, dressed in a teeny leather jacket, see-thru net T-shirt, and bright red micro mini skirt. She was raised by a grandmother, but also spent time in foster care, and is a veteran of the Manhattan gay and trans scene. A seminal moment in her life comes when she meets her blind elderly grandfather and has to ask him if he knows she is transgender. You’re my granddaughter and I’m proud of you, he says. They share an interest in radical politics, and she gives the show a strong sense of the history of the transgender struggle, from Stonewall to STAR and beyond.  My punky, Gay Liberation Front supporting younger self is naturally drawn strongly to Luna’s stories and to Jay Knowles fabulous presence as she inhabits those stories.

For Tatiana, being a transgender woman is an identity she embraces – both the ‘woman’ and the ‘transgender’ parts of the equation. Her story brings us right into the experience of transitioning in the 1960s and 70s, taking friends’ birth control bills, finding doctors willing to prescribe hormones, developing breasts (which she’s so proud of she feels the need to invite a gentleman in the audience to affirm their beauty, cupping his hands around them), and confronting the question of gender-reassignment surgery. Bianca Leigh plays her with perfectly-pitched dignity and confidence.

The larger-than-life Zakia takes everything in her stride and has always believed in herself. She’s a sassy, sexy and self-assured former beauty pageant queen. There’s not an ounce of self-doubt about her, and she meets any opposition (from her mother, from the ladies at the local church) square on. Carolyn M Smith, playing Zakia, has the audience eating out of her hand as she sashays and sways around the space with a big grin on her face. ‘I can see you’re looking at me!’ she says playfully to a man in the front row.

Josephine is about as far away from Zakia as you can imagine. She is a plainly dressed middle-aged woman in slacks and a colourful jumper who is desperate to be a regular, ordinary woman – the girl next door, unassuming, unnoticed. She’s married to a woman who she loves dearly, and one of her biggest fears was how her wife would react to her coming out as transgender. Or discovering her true gender. The politics of language are difficult to work through. She’s played sympathetically and delicately by Australian actress Catherine Fitzgerald, and her story breaks my heart.

Eden, played by British actress Rebecca Root, brings a very different story to the table: one of being born inter-gender, with both male and female sexual characteristics. Her parents take the decision to assign her as male. She has surgery as a child. She grows up, has a girlfriend she loves – but has a growing sense of dissatisfaction, and eventually chooses to transition. Or to reinstate the gender she feels she should have been assigned at birth. In Eden’s case, the language is even more difficult to pick your way through. Her story of  botched gender reassignment surgery, and the sorrow of always being somewhere in-between, is captured brilliantly by Root, who brings Eden’s intense anger and distress on to the stage with great skill.

These tales aren’t told as linear narratives, they weave around each other superbly – the writing and editing a model example of how to use verbatim text in a theatrically cohesive way. Taking a few stories and telling them properly is a good decision, combatting the kind of composite, superficial  view that can often blight verbatim theatre.

The staging is simple but effective. Upstage is an extended folding screen, the kind you might find in a lady’s dressing room, collaged and stencilled with images from women’s magazines. This visual motif is carried through to other stage furniture, plinths and tables draped with chintz cloths. There is a well-directed, simple choreography of sitting, standing, moving to a new station within the set as the stories emerge.

 Trans Scripts is of course primarily a vehicle for the voices of transgender women – but it also offers a more general reflection on what we mean by ‘gender’ and how we relate to our assigned or acquired gender. The debate will go on, and in new forms. Trans Scripts 2: The Men is already on the cards for 2016…

This is a good play, and it is also an important play. No matter what your designated biological sex, assigned or chosen gender, and sexual orientation might be, this is a show to see to make you think about who you are, why you are – and what you might want to be. Go get your magic!