In our latest look at what to watch out for at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, we take a look at 12 shows that are based on true life stories.
These Fringe shows highlight hard-hitting subjects including abortion in ‘All Aboard at Termination Station’, mental health and homophobia in ‘Boy Out The City’, climate change in ‘HOME’, the Windrush generation in ‘One Way Out’, alcoholism in ‘Thirst’ and racism in semi-autobiographical one woman play ‘Tickbox 2’.
1. SAD
Propelled by personal experience of loss, SAD is a musically driven experience, blending poetry with recordings of real people’s stories to explore how grief affects the human condition, and how sound can be healing. Inspiration for the project came when artist Quiet Boy lost his mum, and the music he composed at the time to help process his grief. Whilst they were making the show, he and Brigitte Aphrodite engaged with research from cognitive neuroscientists to work towards a scientific understanding of how sound and music, alongside the use of SAD lamps, can affect chemical and hormone levels and make people feel more positive. SAD takes audiences on a deeply personal journey that offers comfort at its lowest points before freedom, joy, and clarity when the light eventually floods in. Summerhall, Anatomy Lecture Theatre, 2 – 13 August , 3pm. Photo: Submitted
2. Boy Out of the City
Created out of writing from his own private journals, Declan Bennett (EastEnder’s Charlie Cotton) reflects on surviving the streets of Coventry in a NAF NAF jacket, discovering the gay scene in 90s Soho, and confronting his Catholic school days. After moving out of London to wait out the final months of the pandemic initially with his boyfriend, Declan unexpectedly finds himself alone in the Oxfordshire countryside. In his isolation, he is forced to face the demons of his past on a messy journey through the turbulent world of toxic masculinity, homophobia, and men’s mental health. From the lonely aisles of Hobbycraft to the bright lights of New York city, this is the story of a man in desperate search of identity when confronted with sudden unexpected solitude. Underbelly Cowgate, Big Belly, 3 – 27 August (not 14 & 21), 3.30pm. Photo: Submitted
3. The Good Dad (A Love Story)
Inspired by real-life events from the 1980s, this haunting family drama will see one actor take on the roles of a mother and her identical twin daughters, Donna and Carol. Nominated for Lead Performance, New Play and Best Director at the Off West End Awards 2021, The Good Dad is presented in association with the charity Victim Support. Extensively researched by award-winning playwright and former academic Gail Louw, The Good Dad explores and explains – by means of fragmented flashbacks and shifting narratives – how and why Donna is in prison for the murder of her father, in the process unpacking a complex web of exploitation and complicity, dysfunctional family dynamics and flawed institutions. Venue 53, The Space at Surgeons' Hall, Theatre 2, 4 - 26 August (not 13 August), 9.15pm. Photo: Anne Koerber
4. One Way Out
75 years since the arrival of HMS Windrush into Britain, Montel Douglas’s debut play explores young British Caribbeans’ experiences of the Windrush crisis through the story of four young friends on the cusp of adulthood leaving college. Inspired by the true events of his own cousin receiving a deportation letter at the age of nineteen, Douglas tells the important but often neglected story of young people being stripped of their legalities after having grown up in the UK, and the impact that this turmoil has on younger members of the Windrush generation’s sense of identity. With themes of cultural differences, masculinity and the pursuit of patties, this coming-of-age play explores the friendship of four young men, all from different backgrounds but bonded through their South London upbringing, as the freedom and excitement of adolescence is side-lined by a huge, unexpected shift. Underbelly Cowgate, Belly Button, 3 – 27 August (not 14 & 21), 2.15pm. Photo: Submitted