Two for the Ladies

I'm sure that there is a reason behind this top twenty countdown of female performers at the Fringe. I'll even work in my introductory comments on science and religion by the end.

I'm sure. In the meantime, at number fifteen, it's Olivia Lee. She's more famous as a comedian, but having read the press release properly, I realise that she is doing a play: Touched, Like  A Virgin. It does fit in with Lee's comic TV presence (she's playing a woman who is doubting that she can 'have it all'), which tickles gender assumptions to reveal the... well, her new TV show is called Man Up, and she's trying to get 'hapless men to turn their lives around.'

Surprised that she didn't invite me onto that. I think turning a bearded, introverted critic into a man about town would make great television. Anyway, Touched was written by Zoe Lewis and plugs into that anxiety that is bothering both sexes  - isn't it time we grew up?
Thursday 15th August to Sunday 25 August 2013 (Not Saturdays)
Le Monde,16 George St, Edinburgh, EH2 2PF


Funnily enough, she's part of a programme at Le Monde, called Funny Women Pop Up. That ought to make my countdown a little easier...

The thing is, I am deliberately not chasing female performances to be included in this list. As a scientific experiment, I am just trawling my inbox, and seeing what interests me, and fits. My hypothesis is that if the female presence in the Fringe is healthy, I'll be able to complete the countdown without having to look in the Fringe guide for help.

To that end, I'm including Ménage à Trois as number fourteen. I feel lazy - it's so obvious to include and making it part of a 'women in performance' piece is so predictable. It is an NTS presentation of Claire Cunningham and Gail Sneddon's award winning autobiographical study of a life with crutches.

Okay, this is really exposing the problems of a list based on a genetic identity. Ménage à Trois could be slapped into any number of categories, including 'most likely to make a grown man cry' and 'best computer and human interaction.' Cunningham has been wowing the Fringe - and the rest of the world since she did Mobile/Evolution at DanceBase. Sneddon's tricknology effectively expands the aesthetic palette to clarify the theme of isolation that gives Ménage its bite.
Paterson’s Land at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 
9 to 25 August 2013

Even if the concept is falling apart, I'll see if I can't keep going. It's kind of dumb to expect things to have an intrinsic connection just because they are made by women. It presupposes an essentialist female identity. 

Slapping in number thirteen won't help - unlucky for me, because here is a feminist spoken word piece, directed by a woman, Sacha Kyle, about a woman, Andrea Dworkin, but written and performed by a man, Alan Bissett. 

Brave Bissett's bringing back Dworkin's dogmatic diatribes protesting perverse pornography: Dworkin's writings traced the outlines of misogyny that contained the pornographic images of the 1980s.  Dworkin was an important voice in feminist history, although she was somewhat marginalised at the end of her life, and her description of how hatred of women permeated erotic culture is bracing and, frankly, terrifying. 

BAN THIS FILTH!
Scottish Storytelling Centre
2– 11 August 

Does this belong on the list: it's about an important thinker - is her gender relevant? It's by a man - is his gender relevant?

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