EDINBURGH 2017: BWW Q&A- The Shape of the Pain

Tell us a bit about your show?

It's about living with constant pain, based on the experience of CRPS - Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. And it's a love story about two people trying to make a relationship work. It's about how we feel pain, and why, and what happens when that mechanism won't switch off. And whether it's ever really possible to talk about what you're feeling - pain or otherwise - in a way someone else can truly understand.

Why bring it to Edinburgh?

This is where the show starts its life. Edinburgh's a great place for the work to meet a huge variety of people for the first time.

What sets it apart from other shows at the Fringe?

It's not just about the text, or the performance - it's also just as much about the composition, the sound design and the projection and the environment. It's an attempt to use all those things, working together, to create an experience of what the human being at the centre of it is going through, rather than to just realise a piece of writing on stage. In that way, it's an ongoing experiment.

Who would you recommend comes to see your show?

Anyone - the show has audio description and captioning built in as part of the art, rather than an add-on. Other than that, people who like thinking about the wonderful and terrible things the brain can do, who like solo performance, who are looking for a love story, who are into science. People who get happy when the story's told in a variety of ways, not just the obvious.

Are there any other performances you're hoping to catch at the festival?

Loads. I'm doing work in progress reading [Status] at Northern Stage some and the Traverse so obviously I'll be at those. There's a TON of great stuff on at the Cameo Cinema curated by Deborah Pearson. There's a show called Celebration made by Emergency Chorus I saw this year and I can't wait to see again, Barrel Organ's new show Anyone's Guess How We Got Here, Locker Room Talk by Gary McNair at the Traverse, Salt by Selina Thompson and obviously I want to be blown away by stuff I don't even know exists yet.

Completed by Chris Thorpe (Writer - The Shape of the Pain) 

Timings and ticket information for The Shape of the Pain are available on the edfringe website.