BLUSH To Play Edinburgh Fringe Festival

BLUSH, written by Charlotte Josephine and presented by Snuff Box Theatre, the team behind the sell-out, multi-award winning Bitch Boxer, tells five candid stories about revenge porn and all its many victims. BLUSH is a slap in the face and a call to arms.

This angry, honest and heartfelt piece seeks to encourage and broaden examination of how the scarcity culture in modern society is fuelling our shame, encouraging the destructive belief systems that we are not enough.

BLUSH is a fast-paced two-hander that explores where our desire to shame others comes from, the unwritten laws of gender-related responsibility and how the shame we feel at not measuring up spills out sideways into acts of violence.

The catalyst for the piece was legislation passed in April 2015 to make revenge pornography a criminal act. The law now makes it illegal to disclose a 'private sexual photograph or film' without the consent of the person depicted. Many people consent to the creation of an image but having it made public is a very different matter.

While revenge pornography may have been the catalyst of Blush, the true focus of the work is shame. Just as politics needs fear to prosper, consumerism needs shame in order to successfully thrive. BLUSH explores why society has a desire to shame, what it's the result of and how we allow this to happen. BLUSH shines a light on the secrets we attempt to keep in the dark, our fears of disconnection and our attempts to be part of the tribe.

Writer Charlotte Josephine comments, "Research for this play was a revelation for me, it reminded me that anger is an emotional reaction to a perceived threat, that most monsters are in fact victims. I learnt to feel the beginnings of empathy for these men's behaviour, which shocked me. I think the manifestations of shame are far more complicated than we give them credit for. I think we desperately need to relook at our sex education system in schools. Our 'scarcity' culture is incredibly dangerous. Shame grows in secrecy and in silence, empathy is the cure."

Underbelly Cowgate (Big Belly), 56 Cowgate, Edinburgh, EH1 1EG Thursday 4th - Sunday 28th August 2016 (not 16th), 18:00