I’m at the Edinburgh Fringe this year directing CREEKSHOW, a play about the gentrification of Deptford. While here, I’ve watched as much politically minded work as I’ve been able to. With 3,031 registered shows a complete survey would be impossible, but below are some of my picks of the more interesting political shows on offer this year.
Gender and feminism
The past few years have seen a significant increase in political work exploring gender and feminism – helped by the emergence of the FemiFringe, a community that champions non-binary and female creativity at the festival.
Two hit shows this year have been High Steaks and Body Show – productions that sit somewhere between clowning and performance art. Both shows explore societal attitudes towards gender and the body. Eloina Haines’s High Steaks investigates labia-shaming and cosmetic surgery while Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello’s Body Show tackles body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria.
This trend towards addressing challenging gender-related issues through comedy can again be found in All Aboard! At Termination Station – a provocative comedy-cabaret about reproductive rights by Lilly Burton.
Meanwhile Ask a Stripper is a Q&A session with “ethical strippers” Morag and Stacey Clare that veers between outrageously silly striptease and a discussion of sex workers’ rights.
Ethnicity, race and nationality
This year there has been an inclination towards more lighthearted treatments of themes of ethnicity, race and nationality. Playing Latinx, for instance, by Guido García Lueches and the Mariana Malena Theatre Company, is a hugely entertaining solo show merging spoken word, comedy and music to investigate the stereotyping of Latinx culture within western society.
Pilot, by Eclipse artistic director Lekan Lawal, is a visually and textually rich exploration of the themes of race and narrative, alternately playful and complex.
Meanwhile, Soldiers of Tomorrow by Itai Erdal and The Elbow Theatre finds a surprisingly light touch in dealing with Erdal’s harrowing experiences as a former Israeli soldier.
The LGBTQ+ community
Probably the most politically contentious LGBTQ+ production up at this year’s fringe has been Aida H Dee’s Drag Queen Story Hour, regrettably for attracting angry protestors.
Beyond this, two shows stand out for their bold approaches to making politically-minded LGBTQ+ themed work – both adopting a high-octane approach to storytelling. First, Breach Theatre’s After the Act, a musical about Section 28. And second, THISISPOPBABY’s Party Scene, which uses dance to explore the chemsex (sexual activity while under the influence of drugs) crisis.
Capitalism
There has also been a refreshing amount of theatre directly confronting the experience of living under capitalism at this year’s fringe. Three shows stand out for similarly addressing the encroachment of corporate logic into our everyday lives in a sardonic but entertaining fashion.
First, is It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure by disability-led theatre company FlawBored, a satirical account of the corporatisation of identity politics.
Second, Chatham House Rules, by Louis Rembges, presents a surreal account of hospitality agency work and our wider cultural malaise.
International House of Vape, by T Brennan and J Newton of The Wardrobe Ensemble, meanwhile, offers a stinging critique of the relentless commodification of the cultural sphere.
Social inequality
Lastly, a number of shows this year have tackled the theme of social inequality in the UK. Two productions stand out here: both shows that buck the trend described above of light-hearted exploration, electing instead for stark confrontation. Each deploy verbatim techniques and visual storytelling and each present sometimes harrowing accounts.
Concerned Others (by the award-winning Edinburgh-based visual theatre company Tortoise in a Nutshell) is a beautifully crafted piece of visual and object theatre exploring the political causes behind the stark rise in drug-related deaths in Scotland.
Fringe stalwarts LUNG’s Woodhill is a devastating piece of theatre using interviews to tell a tragic story about three inmates at HMP Woodhill, in the process chronicling the demise of Britain’s failing prison system.
Clearly, 2023 has been a strong year for work with a political leaning. Interestingly, much of this work insists on tackling serious subjects in a light-hearted vein – rejecting more austere approaches to political theatre-making.
At the same time, there has been a notable shortage of work tackling the climate crisis. Klanghaus’s Darkroom and Dimanche, by Chaliwaté Company and Focus Company, are clear exceptions. But given its magnitude, the limited number of hyped shows addressing this issue is surprising.
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