Posts Tagged Solo Performance

SELEDKA at the Fringe: Uliana Klimchuk on Art, Displacement and Defiance

July 21, 2026 at 6:33 am · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Edinburgh International Festival, Interviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

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There are interviews that arrive already humming with urgency, and Uliana Klimchuk’s is one of them. Some artists talk about war from a distance; she talks from the middle of it, carrying lived experience into every line she writes and every room she walks into. SELEDKA isn’t just a play—it’s a pressure valve, a reckoning, a refusal to let anyone else tidy up the truth of what displacement feels like.

What struck me most while preparing this piece was how naturally Uliana moves between clarity and candour. One moment she’s discussing the mechanics of institutional support; the next she’s describing Kyiv summer days punctured by missiles. Her answers don’t posture. They don’t reach for grand statements. They simply insist on honesty, and that insistence becomes the spine of the work.

This interview isn’t just about a show heading to Edinburgh. It’s about ownership—of story, of identity, of the right to define home even when history tries to redraw the map. It’s also about collaboration, resilience, and the strange, stubborn hope that theatre can still make people look up from their routines and feel implicated in the world again.

You describe SELEDKA as a political satire born from the “cultural chasm” between Ukraine and contemporary America – when did that gap stop being an irritation and start becoming an artistic obligation?

Every single day in my life, as well as millions of other Ukrainians in the past 4 years, was marked by war. The feeling that I need to talk about it boldly has been growing since day 1. I think I needed to accumulate all of the stories from home, moments of ignorance abroad, people really willing to learn all over the world, but being able to fully comprehend what it’s like to live with war, stories of my family, friends and strangers being so resilient and joyful, happy to share another day summer day in Kyiv, even if it’s followed by missiles and terror at night. I couldn’t have written the play if I didn’t live through it myself, haven’t met all of the courageous people, and wasn’t hurt by the indifference of others. So at a certain point writing became a necessity, because all I had to say was too much to keep in my head. Besides, I really believe asking questions and learning about someone else’s reality, even if it puts us in an uncomfortable position, is what’s gonna ultimately help us be better people. Better citizens of the Earth.

The play asks who gets to claim ownership of a country. That’s a huge, loaded question. In performance, do you want audiences to feel unsettled by it, or implicated by it?

We don’t want to prescribe an experience to the audience, that’s why theater is so compelling, because everyone takes it in their own way. But the hope is that the audience will feel like they can’t turn away from it any longer. And I believe both of these options are a part of one. You can’t feel implicated without feeling unsettled. The world is full of bystanders, I am one sometimes, and so is everyone else. It does not make us monsters, but it definitely provides us with an opportunity to act. To change something. To stand up for what we believe. War is a macro-issue, and because of that it very easily gets overwhelming. We aren’t in charge of war, the government is, therefore we can’t end it. But the truth is, even asking the smallest question can change someone’s life. Ask and continue being curious. Opportunities to help will present themselves. And if we can’t stop the war, we definitely can help people suffering from it. If you don’t know what’s the best way to help, asking that question can create connection, therefore a sense of security and make tangible changes. Seledka, however, forces the audience to question where they stand by arguing for the “other” side, calling it righteous and inevitable. The history is painfully repetitive and we’ve learnt a while ago that all villains believe in their cause thinking they’re saving the world. So does Seledka. The audience then is asked to check in with their values, beliefs and simple acts of will. Do they follow his orders or do they sabotage the troupe?

You’ve lived through invasion, displacement, reinvention – Kyiv to Bulgaria to North Carolina. How much of SELEDKA is theatre, and how much are you refusing to let anyone else narrate your story?

The war has forced people to leave what they love behind. Millions have fled and some never came back. What most Ukrainians now consider the “norm”, should’ve never happened to anyone. But every day our people are exercising their resilience and freedom by just going to work, drinking coffee at a local cafe, watching plays and going to a rock concert. People are living their life to the fullest in the face of danger. That is the most outstanding act of bravery. As for myself, I won’t let Russia tell me where my home is or how to live my life. I come back to Kyiv whenever I have a chance. I use the curfew inflicted by war to spend time with my loved ones under the same roof. The blackouts in the city as an opportunity to connect the way we used to, not through instagram. I have never seen people as kind, generous and loving, as Ukrainians during times of need. Russia tries to turn us against each other, but for the past 4 years we’ve been standing strong and united. That is real defiance. And even though my studies brought me to North Carolina and now my work is taking me to Edinburgh, Kyiv is the only place I call home, and I have never yet been to a city where I felt like I could stay, but my hometown. That is why the play is partly a love letter to the country, the city and the people who bring its streets to life.

SELEDKA has already travelled from Winston-Salem to Washington D.C. to New York. Did American audiences respond with curiosity, confusion, or that particular brand of polite distance people adopt when war feels far away?

I think because the war, not just this one Ukrainian, but any of them really, feels so far from America, people were really moved hearing real stories, to hear more than news headlines. Many have never met anyone from Ukraine, and most definitely haven’t heard stories from people who lived there, so the play changed their world view and the sense of distance between these worlds. Americans most definitely didn’t know a lot about Ukraine, what it looks like, what the weather is like and sometimes even where it is on the map. Good thing, that lesson is learned very quickly during the show. I am very curious to see the audience response in Edinburgh as people in Europe are more aware of the fact that Ukraine is serving as a man shield for the Union. And I have no idea what the reception of the play would look like, but I know it will make people reevaluate the importance of the end of war.

You talk about similarity – that “we are more similar than we think if we learn from our history.” Do you find that audiences resist that idea, or do they secretly crave it?

Audiences do crave it, the mass media just puts way too much effort into creating chaos between people. As a result we all feel separated, scared to offend if we try to relate, forced to live our lives as a routine where we don’t take in what’s going on around us. However, all the great books, movies and stories that we’ve been passing on through generations show the same thing. History is circular, humanity has repeatedly struggled with the same patterns over and over again, and we won’t get any further if we let ourselves forget what we’ve already been through. So to share that experience with thirty or so strangers in a theater, to face the same villain, to really take in the stories of those who have been standing up for the villain is an act of unity we all crave for.

Your director, Lily Afghani, works heavily with themes of immigration and displacement. What happens when two artists shaped by uprooting collaborate – does it create clarity, or does it create friction that becomes the work?

It creates a safe space. Lily being half Iranian, half Mexican and so passionate about both cultures and their heritage is the best person who could’ve possibly directed SELEDKA. They know what it’s like to talk and bring to stage things that are hard to discuss, let alone live through. We started out as friends, and many times we shared conversations followed by tears and a bond between us, because we didn’t turn away from something hard. So our collaboration thrives through that need to connect, to share things that’ve been overlooked and make a difference. Our rehearsal process is a balance of a friendly check in (that tends to last too long, cause we’re having too much fun) and then another conversation about what’s going on in both our worlds politically, what’s the overlap and what did we not yet know. Then we explore how these themes fit into the story that we’re telling through this play. The third person in our small team is Jake Bryant, a phenomenal actor, great singer, writer and luckily for us, producer in this case, is another classmate of ours from University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and a crucial part of this production. I am very thankful to UNCSA and the life that they brought us all together, because I couldn’t have managed to share this play with the world without Lily and Jake, and if I miraculously did, it wouldn’t have been as much fun.

The show was supported by the Thomas S Kenan Institute for the Arts and developed through UNCSA’s season. How did institutional support shape the piece? Did it give you freedom, or did it sharpen your sense of responsibility?

We are immensely grateful for the support from both Kenan Institute and UNCSA as they were there from the very beginning, not only supporting us financially, but guiding us in the effort to build a show from scratch. They let us figure out how to produce a show starting from creating a budget and making sense of Excel sheets formulas, but were always there when we needed advice and were the foundation for our partnership with Producer Hub who is serving as our Fiscal Sponsor. These organisations connected us with people who knew infinitely more about the Fringe, producing and marketing, and, really, all of the other aspects of creating your solo show. Ultimately they have granted us freedom to make choices and not go into debt, which is an outstanding opportunity for artists just out of college and for that I will forever be grateful.

Your background in pop singing is fascinating – pop is often dismissed as light, disposable, unserious. Has that training influenced how you deliver political material onstage, perhaps through rhythm, breath, or emotional precision?

Thank you for this question, because I never really thought about it. First of all, the teachers in my conservatory were all very tough and direct. One of my favourite stories from that time is when I got to my first voice lesson, my teacher gathered her class and after listening to me sing made them tell me one thing they thought was bad about my performance. Perhaps not the best teaching technique, but it informed the way I move through life now. That is all to say, there was nothing light or unserious about pop singing. I think it gave me an amazing training in terms of voicing what I think is important, because singing somehow is one of the scariest things I’ve done. Not only are you conveying the message of the song, but you’re doing it with your own voice. One of the most vulnerable and nerve-wrecking experiences. But having to do that in the pressure of my school where all 18 girls in my class wanted to be the next pop-star has given me the sense of confidence, without which I wouldn’t be able to share the story of Ukraine at the most renowned Theatre Festival. The vocal training has prepared me for the endurance and stamina one requires for a solo performance. And love for music has instilled in me pride for my country and its culture, the incredible music that our artists make inspires me to share that with the world and doesn’t let me stop until the whole planet knows about how talented and courageous Ukrainians are.

You’ve worked with major performers – David Harbour, Ivanna Sakhno, Kelly AuCoin, Jessica Hecht. Did seeing your writing interpreted by actors of that calibre change how you approached SELEDKA?

Most definitely. First of all, seeing your work being brought to life by people you’ve admired long before you thought you wanted to write is a very overwhelming experience. But not only did these people give voice to my characters, some of them became my life long mentors. People who I look up to and who are always there to give back to those just staring out. First of all, they really made me feel like what I have to say is important and should be told. For that I have to thank Laura Cahill, the leader of Young Playwright Ukraine, the group that brought all of these people together and created a platform for young writers like me. One of the mentors I met through that platform is a London based writer, Suzanne Heathcoat, who has given me feedback on the initial stages of SELEDKA and has been there to support it all the way through. The Alum of UNCSA, a Tony Award winner for his play “Oslo”, JT Rogers, has encouraged me and Lily to be the brave artists that we want to be, he has advised me on the writing and was always quick to respond to any email with an absurd question I had. I cannot overstate the impact these people have made on my growth as a writer and an artist, and I only hope to build a career as successful as all of them did, giving back to the next generation.

SELEDKA arrives at the Fringe at a moment when audiences are hungry for authenticity but exhausted by crisis. What do you hope they carry out of the Snug or Playground 3 – a political awakening, a cultural bridge, or simply a deeper sense of human proximity?

The hope is that the audiences will leave with a sense that they’re a part of the history of whatever happens next. That their small actions have the power of helping someone. That history is currently being written. We live in unpredictable times when every day things turn around, when the dangers are far more overpowering than they were 70 years ago and when humanity and kindness are a far more valuable currency than any other existing one.

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A Public Display of Affection: Jonathan Wilson on Memory, Survival and Quiet Rebellion

July 18, 2026 at 6:48 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, LGBT+interest ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

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Jonathan Wilson arrives at the Fringe with A Public Display of Affection, a piece that slips between testimony, memory, and performance with the ease of someone who has lived every inch of the story he’s telling. Rooted in Toronto’s queer history of the 1970s and ’80s, the show doesn’t behave like a museum piece. Instead, it breathes—funny, dangerous, tender, and defiantly ordinary in all the ways queer life has always been. Wilson begins as the “queer elder” at the lectern, but the façade doesn’t last long. What follows is a reckoning with survival, desire, chosen family, and the quiet rebellions that once made even holding hands feel like an act of resistance.

As he brings the work to Edinburgh, Wilson isn’t simply exporting a Canadian story. He’s returning to the country his parents once called home, folding questions of belonging, memory, and inheritance into a performance that refuses nostalgia and insists on truth. In an intimate space like Gilded Balloon’s The Snug, the show becomes less a lecture and more a conversation—one that asks younger queer audiences to imagine their own futures while remembering the people who never got the chance.

This interview explores how the piece evolved, what histories risk being erased, and why Wilson believes humour, imperfection, and community are as essential to queer survival as any political victory. Counter Culture asked him to explain.

You’re bringing a critically acclaimed Toronto production to the Fringe. What shifts when a show rooted in 1970s and ’80s Toronto queer history suddenly meets an Edinburgh audience with a completely different cultural memory?

I’ve learned that although the street names change, the emotions and the struggles are the same. Edinburgh audiences probably haven’t heard of Yonge Street or the St. Charles Tavern in Toronto, but they understand first love, shame, chosen family, and trying to build a life when the world keeps suggesting you shouldn’t exist.

The piece begins as a formal “queer elder” talk and then unravels into something far more intimate and dangerous. Was that structural rupture always part of the concept, or did it emerge as you explored how testimony differs from nostalgia?

It wasn’t planned at all. It happened organically when I discovered I was a terrible historian. The play began as a series of readings for students studying queer history, and I felt an unspoken pressure to be a “good” example. Thankfully, the darker, funnier, and more truthful stories of my friends kept interrupting. The moment I stopped trying to be an authority and started becoming a witness, the play finally knew what it wanted to be.

The press release describes the show as a journey through love, loss, lust, and survival. Which of those threads proved hardest to balance without tipping the piece into sentimentality?

Survival. It’s very easy to turn surviving into a sort of sainthood, but of course we weren’t saints. We were messy, funny, horny, selfish, generous, frightened kids trying to get through another day. But we weren’t simply surviving. We were falling in love, dancing until sunrise, making terrible fashion choices, flirting outrageously, and creating families from scratch.

You chart moments where even holding hands felt like rebellion. How do you stage that kind of quiet defiance in a way that lands with audiences who’ve grown up in a more visible, though still imperfect, queer landscape?

By resisting the urge to make it look heroic. Holding someone’s hand shouldn’t be brave. The tragedy is that it was. It should be gloriously ordinary. I hope younger audiences don’t leave thinking, How courageous they were. I hope they leave wondering why something so beautifully mundane was ever considered dangerous. So much queer history is presented as a warning. I want this show to be an invitation to imagine a long life and an earned elderhood.

Critics have called the show “a forgotten slice of Toronto LGBTQ history brought to life.” What part of that history do you feel is most at risk of being rewritten or erased today?

The ordinary lives. The street kids I loved. My chosen family. The young people on the margins who can still disappear, even within a so‑called respectable queer history. We remember the marches, the police persecution, and the court victories, as we should. But we forget the shared rooms, the back‑alley bars, the friendships, the first kisses, the tacky wallpaper, and the people who never became famous enough to be remembered.

You blend razor‑sharp humour with devastating honesty. Given your background in Second City, improvisation, and comedy, how did you decide where humour helps the story, and where it would undermine it?

Laughter opens us up to hear truth — but importantly, the laughter isn’t there only to soften the truth. It is part of the truth. Queer people have always laughed at funerals, flirted in impossible circumstances, and found joy where no one expected it. That’s an important part of our history too.

Your past work includes My Own Private Oshawa, The Normal Heart, and The Lion King. How does A Public Display of Affection sit alongside those roles in terms of emotional weight and personal investment?

There’s nowhere to hide. When you’re playing Ned Weeks in The Normal Heart or Timon in The Lion King, someone else has written the words. This time, every laugh, every silence, and every difficult memory belongs to me. It’s easily the most exposing thing I’ve ever performed. Even my earlier solo work reflected the version of myself I was capable of sharing in my thirties. This show is what that story looks like after another thirty years of living.

Bringing the play to Scotland feels less like exporting a Canadian piece than finally bringing my own family story home. My parents left Scotland for Canada in the early 1960s, so growing up, Scotland was always referred to as “home.” I’ve written some of that tension into this new version of the show, and it has taken me somewhere even more personal than I expected. Because of course… there’s no place like home.

The show insists on remembering at a moment when queer histories risk disappearing beneath progress and assimilation. What’s the one memory you felt absolutely had to remain unfiltered?

The feeling that disappearing was always a possibility. Not in some abstract political sense. Literally. Friends vanished. Spaces vanished. Entire generations vanished. The danger isn’t forgetting the dates. The danger is forgetting what it actually felt like to be alive.

Gilded Balloon’s The Snug is an intimate space. How does that closeness shape the performance, especially when the material moves between humour, danger, and testimony?

You can’t fake intimacy in a space like The Snug. There’s nowhere to perform at people. I’m simply with them. Some nights it feels less like theatre and more like a conversation that’s wandered somewhere unexpectedly honest. Those are usually the best nights.

If you could speak directly to younger queer people encountering this history for the first time, what’s the one uncomfortable truth you hope the show gives them permission to hold onto?

You don’t owe anyone perfection. Every generation inherits unfinished work. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll disagree with the generation before you. One day you’ll probably horrify the generation after you. Welcome to the club. But don’t confuse having more rights with no longer needing each other. Community isn’t something history gave us. It’s something every generation has to build again.

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Blip Blarp Lands at the Fringe: Conquest, Chaos and Cosmic Cluelessness

July 15, 2026 at 5:02 pm · Filed under Comedy, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

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This is a show that sounds completely deranged on paper but turns out to be unexpectedly touching once you’re actually in the room. Blip Blarp is one of those. What begins as a sci‑fi spoof about an alien invader sent to conquer Earth quickly becomes a surprisingly tender look at dating, desire, and the sheer humiliation of trying to connect with another human being.

The mind behind all this cosmic chaos is Alicia Queen, the writer‑performer who brings Blip Blarp to life. Her creation is loud, glittery, and gloriously ridiculous — but there’s a beating heart under all the bravado. Blip Blarp can cross galaxies without breaking a sweat, yet can’t persuade a single man to go home with her. It’s funny, it’s chaotic, and it’s painfully recognisable.

In our conversation, Alicia talks about bouffon clowning, B‑movie aesthetics, burlesque logic, and the strange comfort of turning personal heartbreak into intergalactic farce. It’s exactly the kind of show the Fringe was built for: weird, warm, and unexpectedly human.

Blip Blarp arrives on Earth with a mission of conquest and ends up tangled in the mess of human dating. What first made you realise that the collision between domination and desire was the perfect engine for a Fringe comedy?

In addition to Blip Blarp having elements of the bouffon clown in her character, I wanted to take something more classic and add a bit of nuance. I started with the archetype of the overconfident, arrogant man who brags about winning battles, building businesses, and being universally loved, but who is actually squeamish and never gets invited to parties. Then I applied that archetype to femininity.

Blip Blarp sees herself as an incredible seductress who can easily conquer not only men but an entire planet through her sexual prowess. In reality, she can’t even get one man into bed.

I also love sci-fi, especially the aesthetic of B-movie science fiction, so everything came together pretty organically. I think Fringe audiences are looking for experiences like that—or at least I am. Something a little weird, something you wouldn’t normally see where you live, while still inviting the audience into a unique world.

The show pulls together sci‑fi, burlesque, clowning, and multimedia — a combination that shouldn’t work but somehow does. How did you find the rhythm that lets all those elements coexist without overwhelming the audience?

The biggest priority for me is always the story. Every element is there in service of it. Each one either helps move the show from one place to another, builds the world—as multimedia does—or explores emotional depth, as burlesque does.

The sci-fi element also gives me a huge amount of creative freedom. Once the audience accepts that they’re in an alien world, you can make some wonderfully strange choices.

You’re playing an alien who’s supremely confident about her reproductive mission yet hilariously naïve about human emotion. How do you keep that balance between cosmic bravado and genuine cluelessness?

I think the fact that she’s almost robotic in her emotions helps. She tries to apply her “Zoronian” logic to something that completely resists formal logic: human sexuality.

Her thinking goes something like, “My Zoronian mating sequence is often effective. Who wouldn’t want to procreate after witnessing my Zoronian mating display?” From her perspective, she’s doing everything correctly. She simply can’t understand why humans aren’t responding the way they’re supposed to.

There’s something very recognisable about watching someone fail at seduction — even when she’s from another planet. What kind of vulnerability did you want audiences to glimpse beneath the glitter and absurdity?

Sexual vulnerability. It makes you incredibly vulnerable to pursue intimacy with someone new, and even more vulnerable when it doesn’t work out.

The show explores not only the failed attempts at seduction but also the confusing and dispiriting aftermath of rejection. I think that’s something almost everyone can relate to, even if the character experiencing it happens to be an alien.

Blip Blarp’s universe feels enormous, even though it’s built inside a late‑night Fringe room. What tricks of stagecraft or imagination do you rely on to make a 60‑minute solo show feel like it spans galaxies?

I use mime to transport us from place to place, and the projections offer glimpses of life on Planet Zoron. But I think the biggest world-building tool is actually Blip Blarp herself—her language, the way she speaks, and the way she moves.

Ultimately, we’re spending an hour in the room with this character, so if she feels like she’s from another planet, the audience comes along with her.

Your comedy swings between big physical choices and tiny emotional beats. When you’re building a character who’s both cosmic and clueless, how do you decide which moments deserve physical exaggeration and which need stillness?

The physical exaggeration is very structured and mostly exists within the dance and burlesque sequences. Whenever Blip Blarp attempts seduction, she expresses herself through movement.

The quieter moments are there to build toward those attempts. They’re where we get to see her expectations, her confusion, and eventually her disappointment, which makes the larger physical moments land even harder.

Burlesque has its own language of power, exposure, and surprise. How does Blip Blarp’s extraterrestrial persona let you twist that language into something both seductive and deeply silly?

I think it’s two things. First, she’s an alien trying to perform what she believes humans find sexy, so there are lots of glitches in her approach. On top of that, her erogenous zones aren’t in the same places as a human’s, which creates some wonderfully ridiculous moments.

Also, burlesque usually exists within a cabaret structure. It’s rare that you’re following one character through their emotional desires and challenges. Because the audience is invested in Blip Blarp and sees her making herself vulnerable, there’s an undercurrent of tension beneath all the comedy that makes the funny moments even stronger.

The show’s premise is outrageous, but the emotional core feels very human — rejection, hope, the need to be understood. Was there a moment in development when you realised the story had become personal? It was personal from the beginning.

I was trying to process a lot at once—a recent divorce, dating for the first time in over a decade—and I felt incredibly vulnerable. From the start, the show became a way to process those experiences while having fun with them, making them lighter, and hopefully making someone else who’s going through something similar feel a little less alone.

Performing an intergalactic love story at 23:15 every night is its own endurance test. What’s your Fringe survival strategy for keeping the show sharp, playful, and emotionally present?

Seeing people enjoy the show, laugh, and have a genuinely fun time is always a huge source of motivation. The music and physicality are also things I never get tired of exploring—there’s always some new nuance to discover.

Outside of the show itself, I’m hoping to connect with other artists for support and encouragement throughout the Fringe. And I’m a huge extrovert, so wandering around at night in costume, inviting people into Blip Blarp’s world for an hour, is actually energising for me. Their curiosity makes me excited to perform.

If Blip Blarp could send one final message back to her home planet about humanity, what do you think she’d say — and would she still be planning to conquer us afterwards?

“Dear Zoronians, the sapient species is perplexing and bizarre and possesses modes of thinking as yet unknown to Zoron. Despite this, they are also somehow charming. Still planning to conquer. May be home late.”

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The Quiet Power Behind Whale Fall: A Conversation with Bruna Longo

June 29, 2026 at 12:10 pm · Filed under Dance, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, Music, Theatre ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Bruna Longo

What hits you first about Whale Fall is its emotional clarity. Bruna Longo — the show’s writer, creator, and solo performer — speaks about the piece with a directness that makes its themes feel close to the skin. She’s not dealing in abstractions; she’s tracing grief, memory, and the strange beauty in collapse and renewal with a kind of steady, unforced honesty.

In this conversation, Bruna lays out the ideas driving the work and the experiences that shaped it. There’s no grandstanding, no over‑polish — just a clear sense of why Whale Fall exists and what she hopes it stirs in the audience. It’s a piece built on substance, and her reflections carry that same weight.

You can explore the production further on the Fringe listing.

 

1.              You’ve spoken about creating this piece in the aftermath of your father’s death. When grief becomes the raw material of a performance, does the stage feel like a refuge, a reckoning, or something stranger altogether?

I wasn’t setting out to make a play about my father’s death, or even one inspired by it. I started researching death because I was trying to understand what was happening to me, to face it, to face my grief. I am very, very nerdy. And at some point, it became very clear that my way of moving through life, of dealing with everything, is through theatre. As I say in the play, theatre is my religare, my non-religious form of spirituality. But I always want to make one thing clear: the show isn’t a therapeutic exercise about my mourning process. It’s the result of a genuine curiosity about death and grief that grew out of the research I began to help me navigate that experience. The play isn’t the process itself, it’s what came from it. So more than a refuge or a reckoning, the stage is a place of congregation, a place where we come together to share our humanity. And I think that’s what this process ultimately became for me.

2.              Western societies have a habit of sanitising death — hiding it behind curtains, euphemisms, and professionalised rituals. What convinced you that theatre could reopen that conversation without slipping into sentimentality or spectacle?

I think if we go back to how theatre was born, we already have the answer to that question. It’s a place where humanity gathers to see itself reflected. And theatre is so raw. Even when we try to make it more like film, with special effects or technology, it’s still fundamentally human. That’s what makes it so powerful and, for me, what makes it the perfect place to face our demons and our fears, to talk about them, and to bring them into the light.

3.              The original version of Whale Fall unfolded inside a functioning funeral chapel in São Paulo. How does relocating the work to St Cuthbert’s Church — with its own centuries of burial and memory — change the emotional temperature of the piece?

We perform in a historic chapel in São Paulo that dates back to 1912. So just the fact that the first recorded church on the site where St Cuthbert’s stands today dates from the 12th century is already incredible to me. Brazil was colonized by the Portuguese in 1500, although, of course, Indigenous peoples had been living there for thousands of years before that. But the Indigenous peoples of Brazil had very different cultures from civilizations like the Maya or the Aztec. They didn’t leave behind monumental stone architecture in the same way, so the oldest stone buildings we have are mostly from the Portuguese colonial period. I love history and architecture, and even though I’m certainly not a fan of colonization, whenever I visit historic buildings, I have a deep respect for the lives of the people who occupied those spaces before me. So performing in a place as ancient as St Cuthbert’s certainly adds another layer to the experience. You’re aware that so many people have passed through that space over so many centuries, carrying their own stories, their own joys, and their own grief. I think there’s something very beautiful about adding our story to that long continuum.

4.              You imagine your own death as a way of mourning yourself — an impossible act in life, but a potent one in theatre. What did that imaginative leap reveal to you that ordinary grief could not?

Imagining our own death, and really imagining the decomposition process, is actually a very Buddhist practice. I’m Buddhist, so it was something I always knew was done, but I never thought I’d actually be able to engage with it. I was afraid, as I think most of us are, to bring that image into my mind. This play is very much in the tradition of memento mori, an artistic tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages, where artists depicted death and mortality to remind us that we’re alive. The full idea is memento mori, memento vivere: remember you will die, remember to live. That’s what imagining my own death has helped me do. Imagining my own death reminds me every day that I am very much alive, and it makes me want to be fully alive until the very last microsecond I live.

5.              The show blends autobiography, anthropology, philosophy, and physical theatre. When you’re working across so many registers, how do you keep the ritualistic core of the piece intact?

I always like to go back to the original meaning of things. So, what is a ritual? It’s a set of gestures, words, and formalized actions with symbolic meaning, performed by or in front of a group of people. And when you think about it, theatre is exactly that. Theatre is a ritual. Whale Fall  have different layers to it. The dramaturgy is built from ethnographic and anthropological research, together with some autobiographical elements. Then there’s the language of the performance itself. The physicality draws on traditions of physical theatre and also inspirations from Japanese theatre, although they’re not the kind of references an audience would necessarily recognize while watching the show. And then there’s the staging. The decision to perform inside a chapel wasn’t just an aesthetic choice; it was part of creating a ritual space. The scenes are structured in a very ritualized way. Music plays a fundamental role, as it does in so many ritual traditions. Those are the bricks the piece is made of. So the performance isn’t recreating any specific ritual, but it borrows the grammar of ritual to create a shared experience where we can gather and reflect on mortality together.

6.              You’ve said that death is perhaps the last taboo in Western culture. Do you think audiences are genuinely ready to confront it, or are they still arriving with the same fear and avoidance you’re trying to unpick?

One of my masters, the director Eugenio Barba, once said in a rehearsal that there is no audience. There is only that one person, and then the next person, and the next, and the next. I’ve carried that with me ever since. So I try to meet each audience member wherever they are. I’ve spoken to people after the show who told me it genuinely shifted something for them, that it helped them look at death with a little more tranquility than they had before. And then, about a month ago, I got a DM on Instagram from someone who had seen the show months earlier. They wrote, “I loved the show, but being inside the chapel in the cemetery was a horrible experience for me because I’m terrified of death.” They spent the whole performance feeling anxious, and yet they were still grateful they came. And I think that’s wonderful. If that’s what the show brought up for that person, then that’s what it brought up. I’m not trying to lead people toward one specific conclusion or emotional response. The only thing I hope is that people begin to think about death as part of life, as something worth bringing to the dinner table, into our everyday conversations. Where that reflection takes them is completely beyond my control. There isn’t a right or wrong way to experience the piece.

7.              The São Paulo Showcase is bringing a wave of Brazilian work to Edinburgh this year. What feels distinctly Brazilian about Whale Fall, and what feels universal — something that belongs to anyone who has ever lost someone?

Death is a universal experience. Everybody dies in the end: spoiler alert! But culturally, we relate to death in many different ways. There are a lot of similarities across Western societies, especially in big cities and metropolitan areas, but every culture has its own temperament, its own rituals, and its own emotional relationship with death. Part of the research behind the show was also ethnographic. I became fascinated by the different ways cultures around the world care for their dead and make sense of loss. The performance brings some of those funeral rites into conversation with our own Western, capitalist, highly industrialized experience of death to remind us that the way we approach death isn’t universal, it’s cultural. And once we realize that, we can start asking whether the relationship we’ve built with death is really the one we want. So, of course, the show brings my own perspective: a Brazilian-Italian Latina woman from one of the biggest cities in the world. But underneath all those identities, I’m just another person who’s going to die and going to lose people I love. And that’s the one thing every audience member and I have in common.

8.              You’re performing 18 shows without a break at the Fringe. How do you protect your own emotional and physical boundaries when the work itself asks you to revisit grief night after night?

That’s a fantastic question. People have asked me before how I deal with talking about my grief and my father every week, month after month. But the truth is, it’s not really about my grief, and it’s not really about my father anymore. And that’s very important to me. As I said before, the research began because of my father’s death and my attempt to understand my own experience of mourning. But once I decided to turn that research into a performance, it stopped being about processing my grief and started being about sharing the curiosity that had grown out of it: my curiosity about death, grief, and ritual. During the research and rehearsal process, there were definitely moments when it was difficult to face some emotions. But once the show opened, something shifted. It became about celebrating life. So, for me, it’s actually a very joyful show. I know that sounds contradictory because it’s about death, but I don’t experience it as a sad piece. I don’t feel like I have to protect myself emotionally from performing it. Physically, though, that’s a different story. Eighteen performances in a row is a lot, and I’m no spring chicken anymore. So I’m trying to get as strong as I can before Edinburgh. It’s a demanding show for my voice because I sing throughout it, and it’s demanding on my body, especially my spine. During the run, my plan is to sleep well, eat well, take care of myself… and wait until it’s all over before I start celebrating.

9.              The press in Brazil described the piece as courageous, ritualistic, and among the year’s best. Does that kind of acclaim create pressure, or does it give you permission to push even further into the uncomfortable questions the show raises?

Honestly, I believe in acclaim as much as I believe in bad reviews. I try not to give either of them too much weight because I don’t think it’s particularly helpful or healthy. Of course, reviews and award nominations are fantastic for the business of show business. They help put bums on seats, they give the work credibility, and they make the show more visible, especially at the Fringe, where audiences have thousands of shows to choose from. That’s all incredibly valuable. But for me, as an artist, what really matters is what happens in the room, in that living moment. That’s theatre. Everything else is important, but it isn’t theatre itself.

10.           If an audience member walks out of St Cuthbert’s with one lingering thought — not a neat lesson, but a disturbance they can’t quite shake — what do you hope that thought is?

I want people to leave asking themselves: What kind of relationship do I want to have with death? There’s a Brazilian psychoanalyst, Rubem Alves, who wrote that instead of being something frightening or cruel, death can be a counselor. I love that. We already know we’re going to die: that part isn’t optional. So maybe, instead of trying to forget about death or push it away, we can let that awareness guide the way we choose to live. And that has very practical consequences too. When we allow ourselves to talk about death, we’re much more likely to take ownership of how we want to die. We can leave our wishes behind, have conversations with our loved ones and our doctors, think about palliative care or assisted dying if that is aligned with our values. These are conversations we tend to avoid because they’re uncomfortable, but they’re really conversations about autonomy.

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