Cuncrete Poetry in Motion

About two years ago I started looking up and thinking about home. Or rather, thinking about houses. Perhaps it was the planned demolition spectacle of the Red Road flats for the opening of the Commonwealth games in Glasgow, or the increasing level of disdain David Cameron was heaping on 60s and 70s social housing projects, or just the realisation that my front room smells like farts because of an irreparable damp problem rather than my own flatulence. For the first time I actually began to look at these physical structures: walls, textures, bricks, angles and concrete. I looked at a lot of concrete. I joined the brutalism appreciation society on Facebook and watched strangers fight over architectural definitions. I started to read books about new towns, post-war utopias and democratic building revolutions across Europe. I started talking to an architect and a town planner. And raw concrete merged with government policy, speeches, and men – so many men – talking about the future. Designing it, shaping it, dictating it. Sometimes with good intentions, but often with more sinister ones. I enlisted the help of researcher Elin Jones who writes about the relationship between masculinity and the built environment. And I started to make a show.

From the mess, this research and obsessive amounts of looking up at the built environment, came Cuncrete, a drag king punk gig about housing that the Great White Males – my anti-virtuoso punk band – will perform at Summerhall at the Edinburgh fringe. And I became Archie – Archibald Tactful, an all-powerful architect – permanently middle aged, permanently peddling the future. Somewhere between Anthony Royal – the architect/god in JG Ballard’s in High Rise – and David Byrne.

This is not the first time I’ve made a show about politic and policy, or dressed up as a bloke. My 2014 solo show How to achieve redemption as a Scot through the medium of Braveheart discussed the independence referendum debate through the (imagined) voices of Alex Salmond, Donald Trump and William Wallace (as portrayed by Mel Gibson in Braveheart). There’s something powerful about taking these ‘authority figures’ and speaking through them. Because if I am Donald Trump – I can make him say whatever I want.

For Cuncrete we wanted to go a bit further – to create a gang of men with such broad brush strokes that they could stand in for an entire social group. The men that, if you boiled down the current housing crisis, back through layers of policy, building contracts and idealistic chat, would be left at the bottom; untouched by it all, immune from criticism, poverty or morals. The Great White Males.

I’m interested in the untouchability of extreme privilege. In the fact that, even though it was a GREAT day on Twitter (possibly my favourite ever), fucking a dead pig didn’t actually touch Cameron.

In our society, the most normal thing you can be is a white man in a suit; it’s our point zero. But not that many of us actually are. Statistics show that only about 10% of the UK population falls into the ‘straight, middle-aged, white, middle-class men’ bracket. By performing in drag we have the opportunity to take a perceived norm and make it weird. To queer the perspective. By knocking something off-centre you can ask questions, make people think, make people notice. With drag nothing is ever totally certain and I love that instability.

The Great White Males are Archibald Tactful, johnsmith, Johnnie Jove and Little Keith – an architect, a banker, a politician and a housing developer. They are all very real and very fake at the same time – we don’t pretend to be skilled actors, we can’t play instruments, and we’ve never written songs before. We are a group of weirdo girls in suits, hair-gel and a lot of eyeliner that missed our eyes and hit our upper lips instead.

There is something curious about imitating something you know so well, but don’t know how to do. The whole show comes from a kind of crude, honest level of observation. In terms of making music – we’ve decided we can do it because we’ve all heard music before, so we know what it sounds like. Likewise – the men in charge, the influence – we all live with that all the time, so in a way it’s very easy to do. Making the show has been an exercise in saying – we can do this, we will do this. It feels ballsy and empowering, like we’re getting to be teenage boys, finally.

We should be angry about what is happening in our cities. Council houses are being sold off and luxury housing developers like Lend Lease (Elephant & Castle redevelopment) and the Berkley Group (Woodberry Down) are building flats explicitly for millionaires to buy and leave empty. And all the while homelessness is rising, and our government is hammering home the idea that the best thing you can possibly do is own a home. ‘We’re going to turn generation rent into generation buy’, declared Cameron last year in a terrifying Thatcherite echo, despite Shelter’s assertion that 58% of new ‘affordable housing’ will be unaffordable for families on average incomes in 2020. Cuncrete is about tracing these lines back – through 60s idealism to right to buy to rampant capitalism. I’m not interested in giving people a history lesson, or telling them what to think, but I’d like to think that we offer up some questions on how we got here, and why it’s a problem.

Cuncrete is a show about uneasy feelings in the pit of my stomach. About things I can’t quite bring myself to accept. About grey spaces and the impenetrable fortress of our political system. It’s designed to be a salve – a space to be angry and also a space to celebrate, to laugh at, the absurdity of the world. Because, the thing is, Archie thinks it’s all ok. And that basically means we’re fucked.

Featured photo by Paul Samuel White

Cuncrete, by Rachael Clerke & The Great White Males, is at Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe, 3-26 August 2016. See www.summerhall.co.uk

Tickets can be booked at www.edfringe.com

A Family Feast at Boo Puppet Festival

Beccy Smith, Darren East and baby J head to Lancashire for a weekend of top-notch puppetry

Creating visual theatre events within their local community was where Horse and Bamboo, based in the rural East Lancs valley of Rossendale since 1978, began. Large scale processional work, fire displays, music and masks worked to bring communities out and together to commemorate local legends, celebrate events and frame the touring performances that made their steady, horse-drawn way around the region in summer times. Taking over the old Liberal Club in Waterfoot in 1996 (which was soon to be renamed The Boo), offered the company a decent sized and secure home; and it seems only natural that a community festival of puppetry should grow up here, to continue these traditions. And so in 2003 the Boo’s annual Puppet Festival was born.

There’s a great sense of continuity – of a deep working into recurring styles and themes – in this long-running company’s work. This festival, more than any other puppetry festival I have attended, effectively brings together local community with the wider puppetry community. Over the course of the weekend, the same faces and families keep cropping up. Based across every available nook and cranny of the Boo, inside and out, this is not a large festival, but its well organised programme presents excellent puppetry for all ages, and gives audiences a real sense of ownership of the building and the work it supports. Audience members talk about previous festivals and the things they remember and what’s new. People clearly come to spend the whole day; some come for the whole weekend.

Ruth Boycott-Garnett: POM

This is the first puppetry festival we’ve taken our 15-month-old son to experience, and the wealth of early years programming was part of the appeal. On Saturday 16 July we saw POM, an adaptation of the myth of Persephone for audiences aged 0-4 by Ruth Boycott-Garnett (commissioned by Big Imaginations, a network of venues promoting excellent children’s theatre in the Northwest). Presented in a cosy upstairs creative space, this was a homely and welcoming piece of visual and sensory storytelling, following the story of cheeky and entrancingly life-sized puppet Pom whose curiosity leads her into the wintry underworld and how her mum gets her back and invites in Spring. This is a wide age range to cater for: a six-month-old’s interest and attention span are very different to that a two-year-old can manage, and a four-year-old is different again. The design is based on series of wooden boxes – the aesthetic of discovery is at the heart of the show: from one box music emanates; one is a lovely hand-cut and hand-cranked scrolling shadow screen; one (almost irresistible to my one-year-old) becomes a secret doorway. Using narrative is challenging but the story is well structured to offer many opportunities for interaction and sensory offers at regular intervals, and the young audience entranced by shiny ‘icicles’ to hold and soft fluffy winter hats to wear and hold. Most powerful though is Boycott-Garnett’s emotional directness – she meets every young member of the audience and works with them closely. The intimacy this creates goes a long way to holding all the different age groups together and within the story. And the wonderful interactive surprise at the show’s end demonstrates the delightful discovery that, well done, the magic of theatre can even transform the appeal of vegetables!

Puppetfish: Sparkle

On Sunday 17^th, we were lucky to squeeze in to Sparkle by Puppetship. This production, created by puppeteer Alison McGowan and visual artist Tanya Axford, and performed by McGowan with musician Alex Finnegan, offers a truly magical experience for its audience of babies that combines live and recorded music, light and projection, object animation and object play. The thoughtfulness of the offer made to young children throughout is something very special. The show takes place in a space defined by colour and sound; we are led in, Pied Piper-like, by a sweetly-made puppet, created from a piece of cloth before our eyes, and live music on what I think is an autoharp. Through the dark curtain and beyond are a series of felt ‘islands’ and cushions on the floor under a giant parasol from which hang an enticing array of glittering, everyday objects with many more intriguing offers collected in buckets to one side. Together, the two performers gently introduce the possibilities of the array of objects to their young audiences. Formally, the production works around the edges of object animation to tease out the many possibilities of everyday things to which young children are so attuned. There’s a strong theme throughout: the colours are blues, white and silver; the atmosphere watery, frosty, space-like and very calm. Feathers fly and tickle, peg fishes nibble at toes; colander jelly fish, tea pot-and-silk birds, glowing corals, and fluffy anemones all visit us around the circle in this 35 minutes of seemingly unstructured but hugely imaginative play. The company understand young children’s fascination with light and use a wide variety of handheld torches, push- and finger-lights brilliantly to share some of the weirder visual qualities of glowing plastic bowls, feathers and cloths. For older children there are object worlds to build and fascinating pulleys that affect lights and objects hanging across the parasol to investigate. By making multiple offers with many different objects, the performers are able to discover way of playing that interest every audience member and supports their needs and help their parents explore new ways of working with them too. This is a performance which fully incorporates the needs and wishes of a young child’s creativity. My one-year-old was so entranced that he kept running over to hug me and laugh in my face as a thank you for bringing him into such a wondrous experience.

Theatre-Rites: Recycled Rubbish

Also with us at the festival were Conor (8) and Shannon (5) who were thrilled to experience some world-class original puppetry in work by Theatre-Rites and Indefinite Articles.

Theatre-Rites’s Recycled Rubbish is a streamlined reworking of their much-loved show Rubbish – down from four excavator-performers to two, and a rather more compact pile of binbags – to make it work for touring, including to non-theatre spaces. The mythic ambience of the excavators’ world is sacrificed to more open-handed witty play between the pair, and between them and us; but the favourite characters from the previous show are all present – the little oil-slicked duck, the dog whose owner needs reassembly, the bin-bag sorting monster, and – still a tour de force – the glove-man on his epic quest to find his partner. A fantastic puppetry-driven show whose visual magic inspires its young audience (Conor and Shannon declared it ‘amazing’).

Claytime, created by Steve Tiplady and Sally Todd, is a masterclass in clowning and visual improvisation which, as in all of the best puppetry, perfectly marries form and subject. The show has been a hit with young audiences (and some older ones) for years: it’s a brilliant idea, brilliantly executed. Taking place on an enticingly plastic-sheeted floor, in front of a simple blue-domed backdrop, the entire content is created before our eyes. Sally brings the clay and is the perfect ‘straight man’, sharing simply with the audience the satisfaction of amassing her collection, working it, holding it. Tiplady is the fool, who rushes in, fascinated by the game and sets about disrupting it. The couple know exactly how to set up and break rules with their audience, who lap up every moment of silliness with glee. After a tightly choreographed 20 minutes of clay-based clowning, the audience are in the palm of our performers’ hands, and more than ready for the challenge of the show’s second half: improvising, overseen by Tiplady, their own story to be created live out of clay by Todd. This process is really well managed – all the right questions are asked (you can discern Tiplady’s background performing with improvisational pros, Improbable) and the audience feel thrillingly switched on. As Sally steadily sculpts, a story emerges about lost penguins, greedy stick-men and a lot of death (don’t worry, we find a happy ending). In the final act, the story is comically puppeteered using Todd’s clay figures, before the audience are invited on to stage to do what they’ve been longing to since the show began, and make their own creations. An exhilarating and inspiring experience for children, setting the bar high for their expectations of theatre to involve and entertain them.

Whalley Range All Stars: Ye Gods

The theatre programme across three spaces is held together by a rolling programme of free outdoor shows, walkabouts, and music in the courtyard.

Whalley Range All Stars’ new show Ye Gods features a whole miniature town created, managed and eventually destroyed by its performer-gods. I never managed to see it straight through, which no doubt influenced my finding it slightly opaque for a big outdoor piece, but there were lovely moments: the Russian-doll reproducing coffee shops, elbowing other buildings out of their way; proliferating and wailing plastic babies pouring in and out of hospital windows; and a properly apocalyptic ending.

The completely ingenious and delightful Clapper Box, by The Fetch Theatre, comprised a row of little proscenium booth stages, occupied by various household objects. Each one awaits both a performer, and one or two audience members from the public. We all wear headphones: the performer gets instructions of what to do with the objects, while the audience hear the story – they are all well-known film extracts, so everyone feels at home. It is strangely hilarious – and delightful that every time you go past there’s someone calling out ‘I need an audience’, or requesting a performer to unlock what will happen with the corkscrew and the bottle-brush. It all quickly becomes highly interactive and fun, and, what’s more, makes everyone a puppeteer!

There were also one-to-one performances from several artists who’d spent the three weeks prior to the festival working with Horse and Bamboo to make these brand new pieces – they were wildly varied; you could see a show in a space helmet, have your portrait painted by a puppet, meet Thomas Byrne’s hamburger who wants to escape his microwave oven and sing, and, in the tiny secret garden space, Araceli Cabrera Caceres presented a rather magical and understated five-minute object theatre piece in which a series of beautiful and minimally worked pieces of driftwood became mythical creatures. A dragon crossed a pale drum moon and a tiny warrior dreamed (or was it real) of flying on her. A lovely introduction to the possibilities of object theatre.

Also in the secret garden, In The Bellows presented two short pieces both built into their portable puppet stage formed of a deconstructed old accordion. In Blue a tiny puppet grandfather helps his young granddaughter to head off on her own adventures, in a miniature epic with some precise puppetry, foot-powered bellows, and neat switches of scale. In Strings and Wire, Breath and Keys, an elderly inhabitant helps his human visitor to fully appreciate the many and fascinating aural possibilities offered by the instrument’s different parts. Featuring live loop pedalling and singing and a neat bit of puppet deconstruction too, this was another sweet calling card from this emerging company.

Horse and Bamboo: Special Delivery

Mark Whitaker presented Horse & Bamboo’s own brand-new short outdoor piece Special Delivery as a bicycling, bumbling, postman who in a fortuitous mixup of labels, delivers four recipients each other’s parcels, with happily surprised outcomes. The four live in the large parcels on his bike, and are each represented by a different puppetry or visual form, giving a varied twenty minutes held together by Mark’s characterful charm.

Throughout the weekend there was a rolling programme of live music happening, and the young people particularly enjoyed the intriguing instrument and generous theatricality of Jali Nyonkoling Kuyateh on the kora, who was also happy to let them have a go on the instrument.

The Boo’s Puppet Festival places puppetry right at the heart of its community. The packed daytime family programme, which makes it easy to spend a day seeing work, watching music, participating in puppetry (including some great carnival-making workshops which culminate in a procession at the end of the Sunday afternoon) runs alongside an evening programme of top quality work, reviewed here.

Based in and around one building, this is a child-scaled festival, offering a real sense of ownership of this building and the art form it champions to its audiences that doesn’t compromise on the quality of the contemporary puppetry it brings to this secluded valley. And the sun shone!

Boo Puppet Festival 2016

Boo Puppet Festival ran 14–17 July 2016. See www.horseandbamboo.org

Beccy Smith, Darren East and baby J attended the festival 16 & 17 July 2016.

Featured Image (top) is Puppetfish: Sparkle

Take a Chance on Me: Ed Fringe 2016, Part the Second

So here we are again – almost August, and time to think about what we’re going to see in Edinburgh. I’ve previously posted a guide to the shows in the Dance, Physical Theatre and Circus / Cabaret sections of the Edinburgh Fringe programme – which you can see here.

Meanwhile back in the jungle – aka the yearly growing and ever daunting Theatre section of the brochure – there are some familiar faces back again, and some intriguing-looking new kids on the block. I’ll also give you the pick of the Comedy section, from a Total Theatre perspective (and you damn well better be grateful that it was me not you trawling through pages of stand-up to seek out the TT comedy contenders); the low-down on the Totally Total Children’s Shows; and a flag-up of the fabulous Forest Fringe, now in its tenth edition at Edinburgh.

Also to mention, in case you’d missed the good news, that the Total Theatre Awards are happening, and if you are taking a show to the Ed Fringe that you think might be our cup of tea (physical, visual and/or novel, experimental, playing with form – you know the sort of thing, what Awards producer Jo Crowley calls ‘wonky theatre’) and are reading this before the Fringe opens, there is still time to register your show for consideration.

If, on the other hand, you just want to know what to go and see, read on…

Inspector Sands: The Lounge

As always, lots to like at Summerhall:

Twice-winner of a Total Theatre Award, Tim Crouch, is back on the Fringe with Adler & Gibb (featured image, top). This innovative play (reviewed here) veers from the from real to unreal, from theatre to film… Inspector Sands, who won a Total Theatre Award with Hysteria, bring The Lounge to Summerhall – a ‘dangerously unstable farce’ about ageing, set in an Axminster carpeted care home lounge. A few more Summerhall plugs (although fair to say you could just go down there and see anything, it would probably not be a wasted hour): Sh!t Theatre, previous winners of the Total Theatre Award for Emerging Artists, return to Summerhall with Letters to Windsor House, which will no doubt be as entertaining and stimulating as their previous shows; Francesca Millican-Slater, whose previous work I’ve enjoyed, presents Stories to Tell in the Middle of the Night, billed as ‘a late-night radio show… spinning stories about lost people’; and acclaimed Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour (White Rabbit Red Rabbit) is back with Blank, in which ‘each night a new performer creates a new story with a new audience’.

Third Angel, a company who never disappoint, bring 600 People to the Northern Stage at Summerhall, promising ’enhanced humans and murderous dolphins’ as stand-up meets astrophysics (opens 18 August). Also under the Northern Stage banner is Sacre Bleu by Zoe Murtagh and Tonry Copeland, which offers us poetry, punk music and popcorn. Another Northern Stage at Summerhall show I’ll be looking forward to seeing is Two Man Show by RashDash, who say: ‘We want to talk about masculinity and patriarchy but the words that exist aren’t good enough, so there’s music and dance too.’ Go girls – dance your politics!

Big in Belgium: MacBain. Photo by Sanne Peper

Also a multiple TT Award winner, also at Summerhall: the always interesting and challenging Ontroerend Goed are back with World Without Us, which is about the end of humanity and what comes after. Intriguing! The OGs are presented by Big in Belgium, a small curated season of Belgian theatre artists and companies, showing throughout August at Summerhall. The consortium’s press release points out that for this year’s festival offerings, a theme has emerged: ‘In one way or another, most shows are talking about a sense of homely safety… it feels like Belgian artists feel the need to think about the disappearance of the places where we are most comfortable.’ One Hundred Homes by Yinken Kuitenbrouwer is an intimate show about ‘home’ played in a small wooden cabin. Bildraum is a collaboration between an architect and a photographer, ‘reconstructing spaces in which memories once took place.’ This one opens 16 August. Us/Them’s BRONKS, which looks to be a highly physical piece, takes as its starting point the Beslan school siege and ‘shows with humour the unique way children cope with extreme situations’. Good – I like to see people tackling serious and dangerous subjects with a bold mix of bravado and sensitivity. And then there’s MacBain, a pitch-black comedy about ‘unbridled ambition, hunger for power and an addiction to intoxication and ecstasy – a freaky fast-forward puppet version of Macbeth which results in a merciless symbiosis of the grunge couple Kurt Cobain/Courtney Love and the Thanes of Cawdor’. Yep, I’m there. Note that the Big in Belgium programme has short runs – the shows are not on for the whole month, so do check the dates at www.summerhall.co.uk

So, something at Summerhall I haven’t seen and know nothing about, but like the look of, is Ubu on the Table by Theatre de la Pire Espece – tabletop puppetry with kitchen utensils; a ‘small scale fresco of grandiose buffoonery’. Who could resist? And Flanagan Collective, whose previous music-theatre crossover Beaulah was nominated for a TT Award, bring us Snakes and Giants, made in collaboration with Joanne Hartstone – a mulch of spoken word, dance and soulful music. Another theatre/music crossover: The Paines Plough’s Roundabout at Summerhall will be presenting Ghost Quartet, the hit Off-Broadway song cycle about love, death and whisky (this one is listed in the Musicals and Opera section of the Fringe brochure – one of a few gems in there nestling amongst the Bugsy Malones and high school takes on Godspell).

Mamoru Iriguchi: 4D cinema

At the live art end of the Summerhall spectrum: Mamoru Iriguchi turns himself into a mobile cinema in 4D Cinema; Cuncrete by Rachael Clerke and the Great White Males is a ‘drag king satire about concrete architecture and the Man’ that looks to be an interesting and entertaining live music and performance hybrid; and in The Dwelling Place installation, Jamie and Lewis Wardrop recreate an abandoned cottage on a remote Scottish island in the basement of Summerhall (ends 19th). Counting Sheep by Lemon Bucket Orkestra (presented by Aurora Nova), ‘a rousing call-to-arms from 15 guerilla-folk party-punks’ is presented by Summerhall off-site atThe King’s Hall.

One more thing to flag up at Summerhall. Well, actually – numerous things, all by the legendary Workcenter Jerzy Grotowski, who present a programme of film and performance from 18 to 27 August, in collaboration with Rose Bruford College. This includes L’Heure Fugitive (in French, for one day only on 25 August); The Living Room, which runs 18th to 21st. The Underground: a Response to Dostoevsky is on the 25th and 26th; and Thirty Years of the Workcenter: a Retrospective on 27 August.

For more information on this and on all shows at this enterprising venue, see www.summerhall.co.uk

Theatre Ad Infinitum: Bucket List. Photo by Alex Brenner

So, dragging myself away from Summerhall, and over to the Pleasance:

Bucket List by Theatre Ad Infinitum, is the powerful story of one Mexican woman’s fight for justice. Here’s a company that is always inventive, entertaining and thought-provoking. They’ve previously brought many radically different shows to the Fringe, including the heart-wrenching and beautiful word-free Translunar Paradise; the politically hard-hitting (and immensely funny) Ballad of the Burning Star; and the extraordinary theatre-in-the-(almost)-dark piece Light. What all these shows have in common is a true understanding of what makes a good physical & visual theatre show – regardless of how many words there are or aren’t in the piece. Bucket List is on my bucket list for shows to catch in the opening days of the Fringe – and, as with all previous work, it will be presented at Pleasance (Dome).

Also at the Pleasance Dome, the fabulous Figs in Wigs are Often Onstage in a show made entirely of entrances and exits, no doubt deconstructing dance and performance mores along the way. Another Dome one to consider: Breach’s follow-up to the Total Theatre Emerging Artists Award winning The Beanfield is Tank, which will tell us what happens when dolphins take LSD (Pleasance Dome, ends 20th). So that’s the second show in this round-up to reference dolphins. Nel, by Scratchworks Theatre Company, looks interesting – a show about a Foley artist that is ‘bursting with live sound effects, theatrical trickery, and physical comedy’. And Theatre Temoin (creators of The Fantasist) are back with The Marked, exploring homelessness with mask, puppetry and physical theatre

There’s always plenty of interesting Total-ish theatre at Pleasance Courtyard. Trick of the Light Theatre’s puppetry show The Bookbinder comes highly recommended, much loved when seen by TT at Ed Fringe 2015 and at Brighton Fringe 2016. Familia de la Noche, who can be relied on for some good solid festival fun, return with a puppetry/clown take on Gulliver’s Travels. The Human Zoo’s Giant promises ‘an explosive, absurd coming-of-age adventure’ using live music, puppetry and music as its tools. Worklight’s Labels, a ‘true story of migration, family and prejudice’ leads us to expect paper planes, racist romances, and lots of sticky labels.

Frozen Light: The Forest

The Forest by Frozen Light is ‘the first ever Fringe show for created specifically for audiences with profound and multiple learning disabilities. Part love story, part mythical quest, The Forest ‘places audiences at the heart of the action in a mysterious wooded glade, allowing them to experience the smell of the forest before a storm, the feel of raindrops on their palms and the sounds of birds singing overhead and twigs cracking underfoot’. The show is performed for to up to 12 people – six people with disabilities, each supported by a companion – and there is also space for up to 12 ‘observers’. It runs for four days only, 22 – 25 August.

Also at the Courtyard, TT Award winning company, Hoipolloi, present The Duke, which is written and performed by the company’s co-founder and artistic director Shon Dale-Jones, who I believe has dropped the Hugh Hughes persona, for now. It will gently ‘challenge us to consider our priorities in a world full of crisis.’

For details of all the above, and for the full Pleasance programme, see www.pleasance.co.uk

Christeene

If you fancy something equally challenging, but rather less gentle, then try CHRISTEENE: CUM CHIRUWI aka Trigger (Underbelly Cowgate opens 17th), which, if it’s anything like their previous work, will sit somewhere between punk rock, queer cabaret, and performance art action, offering ’ferocious visions and mind-altering jams’. Also bending gender in Cowgate is Joan, by Milk Presents, which gives us Joan of Arc as ‘the world’s first drag king’. There you are, another theme emerges – drag kings.

A few shows to look out for at Underbelly that all explore the myriad possibilities offered by contemporary puppetry: In Our Hands by Smoking Apples brings us the story of Alf, a trawler fisherman faced with the challenges of a changing world to Cowgate; Bunk Puppets (creators of the wonderful, award-winning Swamp Juice) bring two shoes, Tink Tank and the returning Sticks Stones Broken Bones to Underbelly Potterow; and also at Potterow, Ada/Ava by Manuel Cinema promises shadow puppets, OHP, and live music exploring ‘mourning and melancholy’.

For more on the Underbelly programme across all their venues see www.underbelly.co.uk

Kriya Arts: Hip

Showing us that Zoo Venues are not just about dance and physical theatre: Kriya Arts bring us Hip, which will recreate an empty flat above a shop in Brighton, in which a woman’s long-forgotten possessions are the key to her life story. This one was seen and loved by TT at the Brighton Fringe, reviewed here. (23–27 August only). Also at Zoo: Machina by Italian company Malcostume Compagnia Teatrale will combine video projection with Commedia dell’Arte. Can’t vouch for it, but it looks interesting, don’t you think? Lecoq trained ensemble Bric a Brac can also be found at Zoo with Ash which ‘uses live music to underscore a lifelong love affair with smoking’. Zoo have also programmed a ‘site-specific, immersive and utterly devilish’ version of The Master and Margarita, by Sleepless Theatre Company, at St Cuthbert’s church graveyard.

For the full Zoo programme, see www.zoofestival.co.uk

Vamos Theatre: Finding Joy

What else? Where else? A few Assembly Venues shows to flag up from what appears to be a good strong programme this year: Vamos Theatre are a UK mask theatre who have found success at the London International Mime Festival and beyond. Their show Finding Joy is at Assembly Hall, but only until 14 August. The inimitable Penny Arcade returns to Edinburgh with her hit show Longing Lasts Longer at Assembly Checkpoint (also only until the 14th). Blending music and theatre, Les Enfants Terrible continue their pursuit of vaudevillian Victoriana and murder most foul in The Vaudevillains. Veteran London International Mime Festival performer Gavin Robertson has moved on from ‘pure’ mime to embrace a plurality of forms. His perennial favourite The Six-Sided Man, inspired by Luke Rheinhart’s cult novel The Dice Man, is at Assembly Roxy, as is a second (seemingly more clownish) show by his company, Escape from the Planet of the Day That Time Forgot. Flabberghast Theatre’s Tatterdermalion at Assembly George Square is apparently a ‘poetic and surreal journey’ featuring puppetry, clown and Victorian aesthetics. I’ve been reprimanded for missing out Assembly’s flagship circus show from my recently published Physical Fringe round-up (well, at least that’s proof that someone reads these posts): so I’ll mention here that Attrape Moi by Flip Fabrique is ‘the new face of Quebec circus’ and features performers from the unavoidable (if you come from Momtreal) Cirque du Soleil, and the renowned (and far more interesting) Cirque Eloize.

Details of all Assembly shows at www.assemblyvenues.com

Aurora Nova’s AniMOtion Show, a live art (literally) and music hybrid, presented outdoors in 2015, comes indoors in 2016, programmed by the Gilded Balloon at the Museum; and I may well take a chance on Plague of Idiots’ Waltzing Matilda, a clown show at Just the Tonic at The Caves. Twisted Tales’ The Company of Wolves offers an imaginative retelling of the Angela Carter classic, using puppetry and physical theatre (at theSpace on the Mile, but just for four days, 8–12 August). Bedlam Theatre have Le Bossu by withWings, a devised physical theatre show based on a Victor Hugo classic.

Previous TT Award winners Res a Res are back this year with a collaboration with Christina Gavel and En Blanc, Foehn Effect, which promises ‘hard hitting social commentary from Spain, and can be found a C Venues’ C Nova. It is hard to determine the form of this piece from the brochure entry, but their last work was highly physical and a very intense immersive experience…

A one-man show by George Orange that I saw and enjoyed as a work-in-progress at Brighton Fringe (reviewed here) is now launched under the name First Lady (opens 15 August, Serenity Cafe). Running with the tag line ‘This is a true story. In the early 90s in Chicago, I fell in love with a man who was running for president – in a dress’, the show circles around George’s affair with Joan Jett Blakk – the man who who was the candidate for the Queer Nation Party against George Bush in the 1992 presidential contest, fighting on the ‘Lick Bush in 92’ ticket.

Not previously seen, but looking interesting is In Fidelity (High Tide in association with Traverse Theatre), described as ‘part TED talk and part theatrical experiment’. Also at the Traverse, the ‘Queen of Ireland’, PANTI, invites you into a ‘gender discombobulating, stiletto-shaped world, exposing the stories behind the make-up – from performance giant to accidental activist…’ This one is listed in the Comedy section of the brochure, the pages of which are oft likened to a deep dark forest from which timid travellers sometimes never return, losing the will to live after ploughing through the Aaaaargh! and Aaaaaah! and AAA listings (what, I’m still on the letter A?) and realising that it is going to be a long haul.

The Establishment

Aaaaaaaanyway, never fear – help is at hand. This is what I’ve unearthed:

Gaullier graduates Piff Paff present All of the Things at Laughing Horse (free, unticketed, 7 – 11 August only). ‘Superstar clown’ Angela Wand’s Wounded Animals at Gilded Balloon Teviot features comedy (well I should think so – it’s in the Comedy section), roller skating, rap, and jazz hands. Andrew Carlberg, under the auspices of Aurora Nova, presents The Blind Date Project at Zoo Southside – in which a guest performer is invited in nightly to be the blind date. Bourgeois and Maurice are back at Underbelly Cowgate with How to Save the World Without Really Trying. Dan Lees and Neil Frost, instigators of the recently launched London Clown Festival, bring The Establishment, a tale of two English gents desperately trying to hang on in there, to Heroes @ Dragonfly. I missed it at the Brighton Fringe but I hear great things and am determined to make it to one of their shows in Edinburgh!

Character comedy doyenne Joanna Neary Does Animals and Men at The Stand comedy club (but only from 16 August), and another feisty female performer, Nina Conti will be In Your Face at Pleasance Courtyard – no doubt with Monkey and a handful of masks in tow. And the much-admired Sleeping Trees are back: first came Mafia? then Western? Now, the final chapter in the trilogy, Sci-Fi? Also at the Courtyard (11–21 August) is Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, which isn’t, I suppose, usual TT territory – but I just want to flag up that Lee Simpson from Improbable was been one of the Chums for so long that it is practically his day job…

I have no idea who or what Puppet Fiction is, but it is described as ‘Pulp Fiction with strings attached’ so might be worth a look (Laughing Horse @ The Newsroom). If stupid puppetry is your thing, there’s also the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppets Do Shakespeare at Gilded Balloon Teviot,

Puddles Pity Party was well received by TT at Ed Fringe 2015 – the ‘golden-voiced clown’ is back with Let’s Go! at Assembly George Square

Colourful-Games_photo-Veronika-Morkv_nait__21

Colourful Games. Photo by Veronika Morkv

And so, from clowns to kids. Disclaimer: I raised three children, ergo I don’t like children’s theatre. There are theatrical experiences aplenty that traumatised me and the kids alike, and at least one of my sons has never forgiven me. But of course there are exceptions – people like Shona Reppe and Puppet State Theatre have won Total Theatre Awards in the past with thoughtful, elegant and entertaining shows aimed at young uns.

Puzzle by Dance Theatre Dansema is described thus: ‘Pure colourful joy from Lithuania for babies (0-3 years). Three dancers emerge from brightly coloured shapes to create the perfect playful mood for the youngest audiences.’ Puzzle is one of a group of four Lithuanian dance shows at Zoo this August. Also dancey, also at Zoo, is Colourful Games by Dansema Dance Theatre, which invites young audiences to ‘explore the world around them with the help of a dancer’. Yep, I need that in my life. Another dance-theatre show for young audiences is Chiffonade by Carre Blanc Company, presented at Institut Francais d’Ecosse, which looks like it is going to help us all progress from childhood to adulthood.

I mentioned Upswing’s gentle circus show Bedtime Stories in my first round-up –but as it is listed in the Children’s Show section, I’ll mention it here again. Other, more boisterous, circus for kids is Trash Test Dummies, a ‘dump truck of hilarity’, also at Circus Hub.

The brilliant Bootworks (winners of a Total Theatre Award for The Spaceman at Forest Fringe a few years ago) this year bring their second children’s theatre show The Many Doors of Frank Feelbad to Pleasance Kids at ECC (which I think is a new outpost for Pleasance). You may recall Bootworks’ previous hit, The Incredible Book Eating Boy, which was a delight.

A couple more to flag up:

The Bremen Town Musicians by Cizqi Puppet Theatre of Turkey, using black-light puppetry, looks lovely – it’s at C Scala (St Stephen’s Church). Anatomy of the Piano for Beginners, byWill Pickvance, was a success at this year’s Brighton Festival, and can be seen in Edinburgh at the Scottish Storytelling Centre.

Action Hero: Watch We Fall at Forest Fringe

Back to the grown up stuff. No Edinburgh Fringe round-up would be complete without the Forest Fringe – even if it is not an official part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, set up to provide an alternative model to the usual bank-breaking ‘rent a venue for a month’ scenario. Not that they were the first. Let’s hear it for Aurora Nova, who for years brought artists from all over the world to their dedicated festival-within-a-festival at St Stephen’s Church, allowing them the opportunity to play for a short run rather than a full month.

Anyway, it’s Forest Fringe we’re talking about here, and it is ten years old – yep, really it is! Having started life in the year-round much-loved and now-lamented Forest Cafe in central Brighton (hence the name) they are now to be found at Out of the Blue Drill Hall just off Leith Walk. For 10 days, 11-20 August, the Drill Hall will hum and buzz with the sound of live art and experimental theatre exploding out of the doors day and night.

Central to this year’s programme will be revivals of ten pieces from Forest Fringe’s first decade by a range of artists who have played a crucial part in making it what it is. Those ten artists have also helped curate an accompanying programme of new work that reflects on ‘questions of memory, history and re-enactment’. The artists involved will include Action Hero, Active Inquiry, Jo Bannon, Ira Brand, Season Butler, Rosana Cade, Dan Canham, Abigail Conway, Richard DeDomenici, Nic Green, Brian Lobel, Daniel Oliver, Paper Cinema, Deborah Pearson, Search Party, Ryan Van Winkle and Greg Wohead.

At the time of writing, there isn’t a full timetable available, but it will be up on the Forest Fringe website soon. Or you could just go there and see whatever is on on any given day – you are unlikely to be disappointed.

Some things are firmly in the diary: I’ve booked myself into Walking Women on 11 August, a day exploring the female perspective on radical walking as artform.

I’m also booked to see Deborah Pearson’s History History History which is off-site at one of my favourite Edinburgh locations, the Cameo cinema at Tollcross, 17 August. It is is a show about ‘the complicated and knotty narratives of history, told through a loose ‘translation’ of a 1956 Hungarian Football Comedy’. No, I’ve no idea what that means, but it is by Deborah Pearson, with dramaturgy be Daniel Kitson, and it is at the Cameo. That is more than enough to get me there.

OK, so that’s me done with the Ed Fringe previewing. Look out for my Blog posts throughout the month of August, Reviews from our team of writers, and news of the Awards assessment process and – of course – the announcement of the nominated shows.

Good luck, comrades. See you on the frontline. If you see me nodding off, give me a nudge. Unless I’m in Bedtime Stories…

Upswing: Bedtime Stories

All Edinburgh Fringe shows (i.e. anything listed in the brochure) can be booked at www.edfringe.com or in person at the venue or at various other outlets in Edinburgh.

Unless otherwise specified, shows run 5–29 August 2016, although some will preview earlier and some have days off, so check dates/times on the website, in the print brochure, or using the Ed Fringe app.

For Forest Fringe artists/shows, see http://forestfringe.co.uk/edinburgh2016/artists/

Horse+Bamboo: Boo Puppet Festival

Every year Horse + Bamboo organise a puppet festival at their base in Waterfoot, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town on the road to Bacup which is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town on the road to Todmorden.

Put simply, the festival is a little gem and features indoor ticketed shows and free outdoor work. So the audience gets to see a wide variety of puppet theatre.

This year they kicked off with the Theatre Ballads, a work in progress where Horse + Bamboo collaborate with singer/violinist Bryony Griffiths and singer Kate Lockley. It features a sequence of folk songs in which women turn the table on the social attitudes of the time, the songs enhanced with puppetry and filmed animation. There’s work still to be done, but it’s strong start – the suitcase puppet show for a song about a female pirate has nice detail and design. The final song about a punch-up over the Franco-Prussian war has a flip chart of large illustrations which look like they were taken from a newspaper of the time – were it not for the occasional BIFF! Or POW! that have sneaked into the drawings.

The following night saw Pickled Image present Coulrophobia. Two ambivalent clowns at the mercy of how clowns are supposed to behave, in a cardboard imitation of the world. The set is inventive and conceals surprises at every turn, there’s a Punch and Judy style show within the show which is both brutal and cruel, and the performing is spot-on throughout – every facial tic and twitch reads. It’s both cheap and literate in its humour, definitely not for family audiences. With the right producer this is a show that could easily become a left-field hit in the manner of Shockheaded Peter.

Multi-instrumentalist Chris Davies composed and played a live musical soundtrack to Lotte Reiniger’s classic film The Adventures of Prince Achmed. The technique is simple – animated silhouettes with a few camera lens/superimposition effects – but there’s a lot of nuance in how the characterisation is achieved and how the different settings for the story are realised. The music keeps pace with the non-stop invention on the screen with themes and rhythms played on a laptop providing a base for improvisations for flute, soprano sax and oud .

Shona Reppe presented The Curious Scrapbook of Josephine Bean, a theatrical detective story where a ‘scientist’ pieces together the life of someone using a scrapbook and found objects as evidence. Shona is an incredibly engaging performer, the story twists and turns in unexpected ways and the objects/clues are enhanced by projections which allow you to see very small and crucial details. In the manner of all good detective stories it kept you hanging in there until the end.

The final show was The Man Who Planted Trees by Puppet State. A lot has been written already about this show (which won a Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe a few years ago). What made it really work was having the story undermined by a puppet dog who seemed to be channelling the anarchic ‘I’m not entirely in this show’ spirit of Bill Murray at his best. Of course the message of the story wasn’t undermined at all but whenever it risked becoming too worthy the dog reappeared to add a comic twist to the proceedings.

These five shows alone would make the festival outstanding. But the best festivals aim to create a full-on festive atmosphere rather than just present a series of shows. So alongside the indoor shows was a cabaret where puppet shows knocked together quickly out of cardboard were presented with German cabaret songs (some of the shows were created in the half-time interval); an outside gallery of sideshows where, courtesy of headphones issuing instructions, one member of the audience does a show for another member of the audience; and a small series of intimate shows created by artists being mentored by Horse + Bamboo, who also premiered a new street show and a community parade made over the weekend.

Outward looking, entertaining, provocative at times, inventive and imaginative. We need more of this kind of culture. When it’s presented in an out of the way, unremarkable town like Waterfoot, which has not fared well in this age of austerity, it makes the experience all the more vivid.

Puppet Festival ran atThe Boo, Waterfoot 14–17 July 2016.

Featured image (top) Pickled Image: Caulrophobia

You’re So Physical! Ed Fringe 2016 Round-up – Physical Theatre, Circus & Cabaret Highlights

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2016 is fast approaching, and the very first thing to say is that the Total Theatre Awards are happening once again, hurrah!

Established in 1997, the Awards have blazed a trail of recognition for independent artists and companies creating innovative, artist-led theatre and performance. If you have a show in the Fringe you’d like the TT team to consider, please fill in an application form (downloadable from the Awards section of this website). To note here also that as the Awards process progresses, there will be a list of nominees announced in all categories, which will be posted here – a handy quick guide to what’s been seen and liked the most in the first 10 days of the Fringe by our fabulous team of assessors. And of course there will be reviews, and more reviews, posted daily, so keep an eye on the Reviews section of this website, and use the search option if you can’t immediately find a review of the show you’re interested in to see if we have seen it.

Many people – online, on social media, in person, wherever – ask for my advice on what to see. An almost impossible question to answer as tastes vary and one woman’s fabulous show is another’s ’Well, I’ll never get that hour of my life back’. But there is hope! We can at least identify the shows that are by companies and artists that Total Theatre knows and loves; shows that we’ve seen elsewhere round the country pre-Edinburgh; and shows that tick the boxes for the sort of work Total Theatre (Magazine and Awards) tries to seek out and support. This includes our traditional territories of physical and visual theatre, mime and clown, dance-theatre, circus-theatre, puppetry and object theatre; and the sort of new territory we’ve embraced in recent years – artist-led work that is innovative in its content and/or experimental in form, or is an interesting new hybrid blend of genres.

So for anyone working their way through the great big telephone directory that is the Ed Fringe ‘brochure’, and losing the will to live, here’s the Total Theatre editor’s round-up of what’s on offer this year. Get yourself a cuppa (or a G&T) and settle down, there’s a lot of goodies to flag up.

Let’s start with my first port of call – Total Theatre’s ‘home’ if you like, the Dance, Physical Theatre and Circus section of the brochure. This section (and the Cabaret listings) is the subject of this article – there will be another one on the shows in the Theatre section coming soon.

There are some big names and heavy hitters in there this year. Thrice winners of a Total Theatre Award, Derevo, return with one of their most applauded shows, Once, at the Assembly George Square Theatre. Many years have gone by since I first saw this show, but I was delighted to learn that this version of the show will feature the company’s three founder members, Anton Adasinsky, Tanya Khabarova, and Elena Yarovaya reunited on stage after many years. It is a wonderful piece of physical theatre work so do give it a go – this show is a beauty. Company Baccala’s Pss Pss (Assembly Roxy) is also not a new show – it has played both the Edinburgh Fringe and the London International Mime Festival in previous years – but if you haven’t yet seen it, go – a beautiful circus and clown two-hander.

Emma Serjeant: Grace

Circa, perhaps the world’s best contemporary circus company, are back again with a re-worked version of Closer, which premiered last year. It has since toured extensively (including a London run) and is now back at the Underbelly George Square. I hope Casus won’t be offended by me calling them a Circa off-shoot – but let’s face it, almost everyone in Australia who makes circus is! Following success in Edinburgh (and elsewhere) with Awards-nominated show Knee Deep, they have separated from their co-founder/performer Emma Sarjeant, and bring new show Driftwood to the Assembly George Square Gardens. Emma, meanwhile, can be found at Assembly Checkpoint with her solo show, Grace. I saw this in an earlier version, whilst she was still a part of Casus (it was originally called Jerk) and was blown away. I’m told, by director John Britton, that the show has been substantially developed, and is even stronger now. For more on all these Assembly shows see www.assemblyfestival.com

Also related to Circa and Casus: Company Here and Now present Perhaps Hope, a two-person piece at Circus Hub, inviting us into ‘a brave new world of hope beyond devastation’. Anything by anyone with any connections to either Circa or Casus can be relied upon to be making something using top-notch contemporary circus skills…

More circus, this time UK based: The wonderful Ockham’s Razor bring their London International Mime Festival hit Tipping Point to C Venues Scala (Edinburgh veterans will know this venue better as St Stephen’s Church), which yours truly feels is their best show yet; Joli Vyann (another LIMF fave) will be at Circus Hub on the Meadows with Imbalance; and the fabulous Gandini Juggling – the jugglers that even people who don’t like juggling like – are back in Edinburgh, although only until the 14th, with Water on Mars, a new three—hander which will be showing at Assembly Roxy.

Kallo Collective: Only Bones

Another sure-fire circus winner is Thomas Monkton’s The Pianist (Assembly Roxy) presented by Aurora Nova and Circo Aereo. Its appeal is that it is a clever contemporary circus piece – using aerial, object manipulation, and clowning – that has the look and feel of an age-old vaudeville act.

Also presented under the Aurora Nova umbrella is Kallo Collective’s Only Bones at Summerhall, which (I have been told, although the programme doesn’t say this) is also by Thomas Monkton, working in collaboration with Gemma Tweddie, and features ‘head juggling and jellyfish’, so I’m in. Aurora Nova’s Wolfgang Hoffman, a man of impeccable taste, is also bringing back the ever-popular A Simple Space by Australian circus company Gravity & Other Myths – this one is more circus than theatre, a really good and exhilarating acrobatics show by a charming troupe of performers.

Another circus show to look out for is Throwback, presented by Jackson Lane’s resident company Silver Lining, who’ll be at Circus Hub with ‘a love letter to nostalgia’. I haven’t seen this company yet, but if Ade Berry of JL thinks they’re good, I’m there, Also at Circus Hub is the returning Lost in Translation hit The Hogwallops, featuring a fabulously faux-chaotic (circus) family of misfits. At the gentler end of the circus spectrum, the Spiegeltent on the Meadows that is one of the Circus Hub venues this year will be transformed each day into a bedroom to invite audiences to snuggle up and relax in Upswing’s Bedtime Stories. That sounds like a welcome oasis in the August mayhem. It might be mostly aimed at young audiences, but I reckon we could all do with a bit of that at the Fringe…

Paraladosanjos: Molhados&Secos

Not a circus show – although created by circus-trained physical theatre performers – is Molhados&Secos by renowned Brazilian company ParaldosanjoS. Vested interest declaration: I am co-producing this one. But I’m doing that because, having spent a great deal of time with the company in Brazil, I witnessed them making magnificent performance work that uses a variety of forms – from aerial circus to site-responsive and community-engaged work in remote communities in Sao Paulo state – and I really wanted to see their work in the UK! Everything they make and do is utterly delicious. Bold, vibrant physical theatre from Brazil – a poignant and poetic reflection on human fragility in the face of the forces of nature, that is at times dramatic, at times comic, and always visually enchanting. They’ll be at Zoo, 14–29 August.

Zoo is always a great port of call for anyone interested in physical and visual theatre work. I’m going to take my chances with Fabbrico del Vento’s dark clown show Petrol – because who wouldn’t want to see a show by a company whose name means ‘made from the wind’.

Also at Zoo: Contemporary? by Arts Printing House, which I’m told is an award-winning smash hit in its native Lithuania, around Europe and beyond. ‘This ironic parody of contemporary dance isn’t afraid to expose the clichés of the genre, whilst at the same time displaying thrilling skills.’ Sounds good to me! I’m always up for anything that challenges the cliches of contemporary dance. Contemporary? is one of a group of four Lithuanian dance shows at Zoo this year. The Moscow Boys also look interesting: a bunch of musical clowns playing all sorts from Tchaikovsky to Justin Timberlake.

Elsewhere, there are a number of interesting looking shows at Dance Base, a venue I always enjoy going to. I have my eye on The Rooster and Partial Memory, a dance-theatre double bill from Palestine ‘conveying the sociopolitical realities of the region’. Offering a haven of calm at the Fringe is gentle mime and storyteller David WW Johnstone, who brings Green Tea and Zen Baka, ‘a quietly understated, gently humorous daydream of a zen fool’. Haven of calm is becoming a bit of a theme in this round-up… But seriously, these slower, gentler shows are so much appreciated in the midst of all the loud and zany noise of the Fringe.

Dudendance: The Lady Vanishes

Off-site and away from the Edinburgh Fringe mayhem (there I go again), perennial Total Theatre favourites Dudendance are back this year with The Lady Vanishes, a slow sculptural performance inspired by Victorian spirit photography and set in the grounds of Haring House. It is presented by Summerhall and on for just two dates, 14 & 15 August. Get in!

The brilliant mask-theatre company Familie Floez are bringing Teatro Delusio (a show I love dearly, set backstage at a theatre), to Pleasance Courtyard. Also at Pleasance Courtyard: Scary Shit by Fringe first timer Rhiannon Faith is (apparently) ‘quite reminiscent of early Bryony Kimmings’ outings in feel… Funny, kooky, quirky and outrageous, this really is the shit!’ OK, sold… I’m there.

I also like the look of Yokai by The Krumple, which is offering ‘dance, magic, poetry and utter stupidity’ in a tale of ‘our attempts to find hope in moments of despair’ (Underbelly Cowgate).

My Bad Sister at The Raunch

Over in the Cabaret section of the brochure, there’s plenty of returning favourites with a clown or circus bent, including the fabulous all-male Briefs company with Briefs Factory (Assembly Hall) and Briefs Factory Presents Sweatshop (Circus Hub on the Meadows); and both Club Spiegel and La Clique Encore at The Famous Spiegeltent, Andrew Square.

Fresh from a successful season at London’s Wonderground, The Raunch which brings together legendary UK cabaret performer Empress Stah and a motley crew of international cabaret and circus artistes in ‘a whip-cracking, rodeo-rocking night for the fun-hearted, not the faint-hearted’.

If you’re after something new (well, it’s new to me anyway) perhaps take a chance on grotesque and gorgeously surreal showgirl Grumble in Sex Clowns Save the World at Underbelly; or New York cult horror sensation Dandy Darkly’s Myth Mouth at CC Blooms. Snap at Assembly George Square, presented as part of the Korean season, promises a multi-faceted performance merging magic, mime and illusion.

In other cabaret highlights, look out for the ubermeister of lounge comedy-cabaret Frank Sanazi at Voodoo Rooms; New York’s Lady Rizo with Multiplied, digging her sparkling heels into new motherhood at Assembly Checkpoint; and the irrepressible octogenarian Lynn Ruth Miller examining the men she has loved at C Nova.

On the other hand, there’s always Come Look at the Baby, which is exactly what it says on the can. An actual baby, on display, doing what a baby does – no tricks, no illusion, just taking the contemporary cult of the non-actor to its obvious conclusion.

Come Look at the Baby

All the above mentioned shows can be booked at www.edfringe.com

Featured image (top) Derevo: Once