Betty Grumble on why radical performance artists are vital to the Fringe
‘Fringe recalibrates the binaries of high and low art,’ writes Australian performance artist Betty Grumble. Here the self-styled ‘sex clown’ explains why risk-taking artists at the Fringe are necessary for challenging the status-quo. By Betty Grumble
Enemies of Grooviness Eat Shit is a good name for a show and an arrangement of words that help me breathe space into the devastation in this time. Who would claim to be an enemy of grooviness? Who are they? Where do they live? As I bring this work to Edinburgh after years away from the festival I do it to honour howls of righteous revenge that might transform into pure love. And whilst I do this, I too Eat Shit.
I have travelled to Edinburgh Fringe four times. My first time and second time, I was initiated into a marathon of late night spots, leaping from gig to gig, making kin, making mistakes, giddy with the whirl. My third and fourth times were with my solo works Sex Clown Saves The World and Love & Anger. I found family there, recognition, deep lessons in craft and I even lost a tooth. I’ve not replaced it, and when my tongue plays in the hole where the tooth should be I remember Edinburgh, how it had its way with me and how I want it bad again.
I have witnessed artists Christeene, Leah Shelton, Harry Clayton Wright, Annie Sprinkle, Polytoxic, Lucy Mccormick and Adrienne Truscott take the Fringe in their arms and worship its mantle as a fertile site to remind mainstream venues that Fringe dwellers, border riders and the underground are vital forces for our world, necessary medicine, and to be respected thus. Fringe recalibrates the binaries of high and low art, challenges the status quo and strengthens the muscles of risk-taking, genre-defying practice. We need this now more than ever. This is what I intend to do this year at the festival. I wanna be in this and bathe in this, fuel up in the congregation and bring some of that magic home with me.
Fringe works can often be invitations into how we can be with our bodies in all of our messy, glorious and radical dreaming. In Enemies I do a sex clown grief death dance with pleasure and justice. I compost myself live on stage and share the creative methodologies that have given me access to my spirituality across the past decade. In my pursuit for healing from the patriarchy, I have found refuge in performance. Stories told from the guts, portals into power, methods forged anew in the eyes and arms of community. Whole worlds built and dissolved each night – remembering together.
What is it to be in this together in our bodies? To quote one of the greatest loves of my life, the late great butch queen, high priestess of poetry and Palestinian-Lebanese artist Candy Royalle: “This gathering, every gathering is sacred.’” As a strategy for this gathering, the work presents the dead as an access point to honouring the full heaving mess of grief work. Here, with the legacy of those that have come before us, we hope to meet the strength inherent in our bodies, the knowledge we carry from kin, and the possibility of retrieving our sacred creative tools back from despair.
And what a legacy it is to be a part of. The radical artists from across the world that converge on this place every year with an invitation to audiences to open their minds, to crack open their hearts, and be together to explore the mess of the world with us.
There are vanishingly few places on Earth that so exuberantly invite audiences to arrive with an appetite for the unexpected and a readiness to be transformed. Here, they come not for the safe or familiar, but for the bold, the provocative, the unapologetically daring. And it is precisely this atmosphere that gives many shows an additional spark; that moment when something once intimate or embryonic catches fire, fuelled by the energy of audiences who are ready for it.
Fringe is at its absolute best when folks clear away expectations and accept that invitation to get outside of their bubbles and ingrained ideas and algorithms and sit joyfully in discomfort and, hopefully, leave changed. Maybe a little wiser, maybe a little softer, maybe with a little erotic skip in your step.
The show we have created is a declaration in adoration for storytelling itself and the transformative power of our bodies. We represent a potent culture belonging to Sydney’s underground creative force that lives on Gadigal Country and we are so excited to meet you with all our laughing, sighing, dancing weapons of splendour.
Betty Grumble: Enemies of Grooviness Eat Shit, Assembly Roxy, until 24 August
Make sure you keep up to date with Arts and Culture news from across Scotland by signing up to our free newsletter here
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.