Ben Walters (r) giving his talk, Dr Duckie’s Homemade Mutant Hope Machines, at Summerhall, Edinburgh, 12 August 2019.
Posted by Ben Walters, Sat 24 Aug 2019, 11:51am.
This year, 2019, was my tenth covering cabaret as a critic at the Edinburgh Fringe. It was a strong year with lots of powerful work from London-based performers and some exciting discoveries from other places too.
Once during the fest, I delivered my Dr Duckie talk – about, among other things, how participatory performance can function as a ‘homemade mutant hope machine’, generating collective hope in the possibility of better worlds for marginalised people – at Summerhall. It was to an audience mostly comprising performers and producers, which added an extra frisson of tables perhaps being turned. Happily, the response was very positive and helped me understand better some of the potential practical applications of the concepts.
I wrote this round-up feature for the Scotsman about the Dr Duckie-related matters of apocalypse, dystopia and utopia. It talks as well about how the sense of impending doom around the Fringe itself, as an increasingly problematic festival, might be addressed by engaging the power of participatory performance to support spaces of collective care.
The feature refers to these shows:
60 Minutes to Save the World – Vladimir McTavish
A Poet’s Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse
Andrew O’Neill: We Are Not in the Least Afraid of Ruins; We Carry a New World in Our Hearts
Polly: A Drag Rebellion
Jammy Dodgers
Unicorn Party
Rose McGowan: Planet 9
Burgerz
Scottee: Class
Tricky Second Album
Community Circle
The Populars
The Creative Martyrs: Kabarett DysUtopia
with nods at Jock Tamson’s Bairns and Meatball Séance.
I also wrote these Scotsman reviews of individual shows (click to read – NB after a couple of free articles you have to register to access some more, then pay for unlimited access):
Ada Campe and the Psychic Duck
A(Poke)alypse Now – Mamoirs of a Gieza; I’m Still Here
An Evening without Kate Bush (by Sarah-Louise Young)
Georgia Tasda’s School of Magic
Sex Education (by Harry Clayton-Wright)
I also got to speak on a couple of panels at Fringe Central, about how artists can deal with reviews and how queer performance can be a form of activism, rounding off a busy and enjoyable fest.
