Editorial: Reflecting on 7 years of Fringe of Colour
From starting The Database in 2018 to preserving its legacy today, Fringe of Colour founder and director Jess Brough looks back to where it all began and celebrates another beautiful summer with Artists of Colour at the Edinburgh festivals.
In diagnosis limbo, ADHD stories bring a joyful ache
In this Response to Shaparak Khorsandi’s Edinburgh Fringe show Scatterbrain, Shivam Chowdhary describes the joy of watching a performer revel in their ADHD mind, and the ache that comes with finding oneself on the outside of a diagnosis.
Aaron Pang proves that truth is sexier than tropes
Haneul Lee responds to Falling: A Disabled Love Story by Aaron Pang, exploring the mainstream media’s obsession with disabled bodies and why disabled people get to be seen as “cute” but rarely “sexy.”
To reconcile with water, through fear and grief
Elete N-F responds to How I Learned to Swim by Somebody Jones, embracing the darkness of water and its properties of healing and communality.
Abandon God restored my faith in comedy as a remedy for despair
Memuna Konteh responds to Fringe comedy split-bill Ayo Adenekan and Alvin Bang: Abandon God, putting expectations aside to enjoy stand-up that adapts to important societal moments.
How Diana Feng and Sierra Sevilla are interrogating norms that define culture
Rho Chung interviews theatremakers Diana Feng from Don’t Call Me China Doll and Sierra Sevilla from For the Love of Spam about their Edinburgh Fringe shows, unpacking racial stereotypes, tropes, and the histories that have maintained them.
Embodying the climate crisis and reckoning with the body
In this Response to Sleeper by Korean dance group Jajack Movement, Alycia Pirmohamed interrogates the architectures of the dancers bodies amidst the climate crisis, and of her own body in an Edinburgh studio.
Excavating childhood from the chaos of conflict
Anthony V. Capildeo responds to Precious Cargo, a story about the children affected by Operation Babylift during the Vietnam war, by Australian writer-performer Barton Williams (Huynh van Cuong) and Hebridean composer Andy Yearley (Nguyen Tang).
Longing for a child and waiting for a moment
In this Response to Rat Tails (WIP) by Jeremy McClain, Eilidh Akilade details the journey of art criticism, from the inception of an idea in June, to the witnessing of an Edinburgh Fringe show, before the long bus ride home in August.
History repeats itself at the Edinburgh Fringe
Katie Goh responds to A History of Fortune Cookies by Sean Wai Keung, looking back on previous iterations of the performer’s work and of her own writing to find value in repetition.
Charlene Kaye: A Rockstar breaking generational moulds
Xandra Sunglim Burns responds to Charlene Kaye’s show ‘Tiger Daughter or: How I Brought My Immigrant Mother Ultimate Shame’, on music, mothers, and breaking the generational curse of assimilation and propriety.
To fall and find a country in the home of your body
Anahit Behrooz responds to Cosmos, a solo performance by Palestinian contortionist and aerial acrobat dancer, Ashtar Muallem. “My body is my country,” she explains, minutes into her Edinburgh Fringe show. “After all, the first place we live is our bodies.”
Demi Adejuyigbe side-steps perfection and lands on his feet
Arusa Qureshi talks to comedian and ex-Vine creator Demi Adejuyigbe about developing his first Fringe show and chasing the process over perfection.
Editorial: Fringe of Colour returns with a new (and old) mission
Founder Jess Brough reflects on the value of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for Artists of Colour and announces a new focus for the Responses project.
Screen Representation Through Audio Description
Thomas Reid discusses taking an intentional approach to audio description, advocating for greater diversity in the voices chosen to convey meaning to disabled audiences.
Finding poetry below the surface
Theophina Gabriel responds to Alexandrina Hemsley’s Fountain, where a trio of dancers explore tidal cycles of repair, loss, joy and intimacy, expressed through movement and digital imagery.
Smitten for a rom-com’s quest for connection
Xandra Sunglim Burns responds to The Perfect Knight, a film by Stephané Alexandre that shows romance may come when you are least expecting it.
Allowing waters and truths to sluice in
Shivanee Ramlochan discusses Michelle Mohabeer’s Coconut/Cane & Cutlass, a mythic/poetic rumination on exile, displacement, and nationhood from the perspective of an Indo-Caribbean lesbian who migrated to Canada twenty years ago.
Moving through manipulated pasts
Shirine Shah responds to Flesh and Paper (1990), a lyrical exploration of the sense and sensibilities of Indian lesbian poet and writer, Suniti Namjoshi, directed by Pratibha Parmar.
Longing for the homelands of our imagination
Asyia Iftikhar responds to (Tending) (to) (Ta), a dream-like journey across parallel dimensions that imagines a world without capitalism, by interdisciplinary artist April Lin 林森.