EDINBURGH 2019: SHIT Q&A

Coming directly from the incredibly prestigious theatre festival VENICE BIENNALE TEATRO 2019, long-time collaborators - writer Patricia Cornelius and director Susie Dee - shine a neon striplight on the intersections of class and misogony, bringing three thoroughly nasty girls on stage in SHIT - an unflinching, gut-punching, provocative and heart-breaking piece. Ahead of SHIT's run at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Patricia talks to BroadwayWorld about the thinking and process behind the show.

Tell us a bit about Shit.

SHIT is a story about three wild, audacious, vulgar and tough as guts women who commit a dreadful crime because they're angry, because they're wired and because they're looking to vent. It's an unsentimental view of women who have been fucked over, forsaken and discarded. In this play they own the space: they're powerful, they're dangerous.

What is the inspiration behind it?

In 2012 a group of three playwrights, three directors and three actors, all female, got together for a workshop to take a ruthless look into gender and sexual identity. It was an investigation into creating female characters in all female casts; in wanting to let them rip, for them to take the stage with a powerful physicality and with stories that allowed them to soar.

We talked about incarceration; women in prison, as sex slaves, in prostitution, domestically bound, as wives, as mothers and women caught in cultural and social confines. Old stuff really, because so much hasn't changed. We knew we had to find a new take. To give the female characters an audacity, a power and physicality that has rarely been seen before on our stages.

It was from this workshop that my play, SHIT was first formed. Billy, Bobby and Sam, three dangerous and unlikeable women who are compelling, fascinating and who commit a dreadful crime were born.

Why is it important to tell this story?

There is a remarkable absence of all female works with female characters that are powerful and carry the play. There's also a remarkable absence of work which deals with class, working and under-class characters that experience life in a tough and unforgiving world. Their stories are vital and mostly untold, and it is extremely important to give them voice and to reveal alternative views of the world, that is mostly told through a comfortable, well- trod middle class perspective.

Who would you recommend comes to see it?

Anyone who loves theatre should see this play. It is visceral and vital and reminiscent of a theatre that use actors at their full potential. It takes you by the neck and shakes. It makes you laugh, it makes you uncomfortable. It makes you think and makes you sorry and makes you weep at how cruel we've become- exactly the kind of theatre anyone would want!

What's next for Shit after the festival?

SHIT has had many seasons with this wonderful cast in Australia and they've honed and have made the work their own. We are hoping that we will be London bound.

Patricia Cornelius' SHIT is at Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 3rd - 25th August (not 12th or 19th).Tickets and more information: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/shit

Photo credit: Sebastian Bourges

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