[New post] Juliette Burton, Barbie and the new Edinburgh Fringe from AH! to HA! HA!
thejohnfleming posted: " This year's Edinburgh Fringe, in effect, starts today and so does Juliette Burton's new show there. I chatted with her before she went up to Scotland. JOHN: What did you do during the Covid pandemic? JULIETTE: I lost my mind. T" SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog
I chatted with her before she went up to Scotland.
JOHN: What did you do during the Covid pandemic?
JULIETTE: I lost my mind. The last couple of years have not been good. I was on my second UK tour when Covid started.
JOHN: You are going up to the Fringe with a new show.
JULIETTE: Yes. JULIETTE BURTON: NO BRAINER… My brain has broken so many times that, last time it broke, during the pandemic, I fixed it and I learned so much that I thought I would share what I learned with audiences. It's a manual for the mind and it's about rebuilding a life, a brain and a world. I should know how to rebuild after a breakdown, because I've done it enough times.
I'm just doing a short 10-day run. I love Edinburgh, but I haven't been for four years, so I'm not sure what it's going to be like anymore
JOHN: You're very sensible. Normally I would say never go up for 10 days because you'd have no publicity momentum and you won't get a review, but it's re-dipping your feet in the water for next year, really.
JULIETTE: I'm not really going for the reviews. I'm going to see what the vibe is like post-Covid: if audiences are still there. It doesn't really matter how the run goes or the reviews. I don't feel the pressure; it's all about feelings.
The show has been written for two years. It's going on a UK tour after Edinburgh. It was written as tour length not Edinburgh Fringe length. Tour length is 1 hour 15 minutes. Fringe length is 55 minutes. Now it's Fringe length.
JULIETTE: I'm already writing three other shows. There's HOPEPUNK, GOING ROGUE and DADDY'S GIRL. The show I am taking up to Edinburgh this year was originally going to be JULIETTE BURTON: HOPEPUNK.
JOHN: Hope Punk?
JULIETTE: Hopepunk is actually a genre. When I got the funding from the Arts Council to do the show about Hopepunk, I had a breakdown instead because a guy left me… It wasn't just about the guy. It was about the pandemic and my upbringing and childhood and stuff. I couldn't find any hope and struggled to write about hope and the more I read about hope the more I thought I don't understand it! I got angry about the concept of hope and angry at myself for being so screwed-up. If I HAD written it, it would have been perfect timing to catch this wave of zeitgeist…
JULIETTE: Oh, I love that movie so much! I thought it was life-changing. I wasn't prepared for it. I went fully dressed-up in pink - I wear it on stage so much - and I was sitting there just crying my heart out. It reminded me of the endless optimism and relentless positivity and what lies beneath it.
I read an amazing article about how the Barbie tweenage fantasy and the Little Mermaid thing and all that is big at the moment because, as a society, we are a tweenage girl, really.
A tweenage girl knows who they were before; they don't know who they're going to be; things can't ever be the same again; there's a lot of grief beneath the bright hot pink and the glitter… and we are all trying to work through and process what's happened in the last few years through this zeitgeist movement at the moment.
Barbie: "Do you guys ever think about dying?"
I was going to get a T-shirt that has "Do you guys ever think about dying?" (a line from Barbie) with the Barbie logo and I wanted to wear it on stage but somebody suggested that maybe that message is too dark for my show. For MY show! I thought it was perfect for my show.
During the pandemic, I lived in a tiny studio that was cold and mouldy and damp-ridden. In the last couple of years, I had a breakdown, then worked as an usher for the National Theatre, then I worked as the manager of a vegan cafe and then started working in Borough Market.
JOHN: But now you have a new day job: copywriter.
JULIETTE: Yes, for a mental health research charity. It's not just about raising awareness; it's about focusing on the science behind, lobbying for governmental change, service provision change, prevention, intervention, diagnosis.
JOHN: The science behind the lobbying?
JULIETTE: Yes. That's one of the main reasons I was so keen to work for them. A lot of the research papers they're involved with inform the lobbying of Parliamentary groups. A recent one was about how we do need a 10-year mental health plan. I'm ambassador for another mental health charity and I love the fact that all mental health charities are working together - nobody's competitive.
I didn't know who I was before the pandemic and I've done a lot of deep work on myself. There are way more jokes in my shows now because of all the shit I've gone through in the last few years.
JOHN: Why would terrible experiences make you funnier?
JULIETTE: You know why.
JOHN: My reader in Guatemala may not know the subtleties.
JULIETTE: If you go through darkness, the only way to survive is to find some way of making it fun and light. So you have to keep finding the light again and again and again. The darker things got, the deeper the work I did on myself and if I have to carry on… and there's a force within me that needs to carry on… then I'm going to have to find some 'funny' in it.
JOHN: Why does 'funny' help?
Juliette Burton, July 2023
JULIETTE: On one level it helps because it connects us to other people if we're laughing as a sign of recognition: we understand what other people are going through. There's also a reason physiologically speaking: it's a massage of our nervous system and my nervous system has been in disregulation for the last few years and most of my life, to be fair - in a state of danger and perception and threat response. So being able to laugh is a way of tension-relieving from that sense of danger. You feel safe if you're laughing.
JOHN: Isn't the reason people laugh a shock reaction to something unexpected? If you punch someone in the face, they go AH and if you say something totally unexpected - a punchline - they go HA. Like you say: a relief of tension.
JULIETTE: The way it was explained to me in an amazing book The Naked Jape was that any joke - whether it's a one-liner or whether it's a story narrative - it's the twist of the unexpected that releases tension, So early Cave Man might not have written jokes but might have laughed, being chased by a sabre-toothed tiger… tension, tension, tension building up… and then suddenly the sabre toothed tiger falls off a cliff. Early man might laugh… with relief.
It's exactly the same, narratively speaking, whether it's a one-liner or a longer joke. You build the tension, tension, tension… The audience thinks they know where it's going… But then there's the twist, the unexpected… And suddenly there's the laugh of relief and surprise. It's a bit of shock, but also a bit of the changing of someone's perception.
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