Coming out later this week is a review of three feminist picks for Edinburgh Fringe 2017. Today I have an extract focusing on Paula Varjack’s ‘Show Me The Money’. Look out for the full piece this coming Wednesday in The Norwich Radical.
Show Me The Money
*****
Paula Varjack is a performance artist who keeps going from strength to strength. She is a poet, yet she also has mastered a unique style of show that is a documentary-meets-monologue. She introduces the audience to a world of dreams, before bringing us down to earth to face the reality of being an artist in a capitalist society. Money is a necessary evil, but she shows that it is often viewed that artists don’t need it to eat and put shelter over our heads. I write this from a shared hostel room, where I’ve had three hours sleep due to snoring coming from the top bunk. And at Edinburgh Fringe Festival you’re never more than two metres away from an artist, so it would likely be the case that the audience could relate to this. Though from the audience participation from the beginning, we knew who was earning under £10,000 a year (like me), up to the one man who sat down at around the £80,000 mark. The audience was kept engaged through a series of videos, and experimental music and visuals. This also showed that Varjack is not only a talented story-teller, threading her monologue together with a kind of narrative arc, a journey of some sort, but she’s also technically skilled. Her naturally warm personality shines through on stage, where she welcomed everyone to join her in a vision of hope for the future in times where it can be hard to find.
You can see ‘Show Me The Money’ at Bedlam Theatre at 15:30 today.
Poet on page and stage. Creator of She Grrrowls. Facilitator. Writer. 