Returning To Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Theatre Company Zoo Co Presents SIRENS

You're an immortal demi-goddess whose only job is to sing and look beautiful. No, this isn't a show about Beyoncé. Three Greek sirens find themselves washed up on Hastings beach. It's 2018, Zeus has done a runner, sailors don't tend to hang about in sleepy coastal towns anymore and sitting around naked on rocks is no longer en vogue. But the sirens are still cursed: any man who hears their voice dies instantly. It's a drag.

Award-winning Zoo Co returns to stick two fingers up at gender expectations using breathtaking visual storytelling, stunning projections and an other-worldly electro-folk soundtrack. This diverse ensemble stages an honest, funny and daring take on identity, sexuality and language. A Riot Grrrl inspired rebellion against social norms.

SIRENS is creatively captioned with a BSL inclusive narrative and for the first time the company is working with a deaf actor.

Says Florence O'Mahony, Artistic Director of Zoo Co: 'Jamal Ajali is playing Tobi, a young Deaf man who gets tangled up with the sirens when they arrive on Hastings beach. We wanted to challenge the notion that d/Deaf actors can only play specifically d/Deaf characters. In fact - Jamal is playing (a ridiculously silly) Zeus at the beginning of the play. Because why not? We haven't seen nearly enough d/Deaf or disabled actors playing the broad range of characters that exist on stage. We hope Sirens challenges that. It's a really fun show, and the comedy often derives from the use of two very different languages. It's feminist, it celebrates queerness, and it explores the experience of being Deaf, but it's also a spoofy, tongue-in-cheek heist story.'

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