‘Blueprint continues to be joyous and provocatively challenging’-Part 3 of the fringe festival.

Ruth Kettle-Frisby today continues her review of the fantastic Blueprint Fringe Festival held at the Queen’s Theatre,Hornchurch.

Blueprint continued to be joyous and provocatively challenging in equal measures. 

The Freak, by Bertie Darrell is a fabulously intriguing exploration into queer relationships and dynamics in a society that – while learning to culturally shift, expand and accommodate – is still being constructed for the heteronormative experience. Even from within queer spaces themselves, there are levels of acceptability based on hetero norms, like Russian dolls of oppressive existence.   

The sublimely queer character Kit introduces wild and subversive new possibilities where aesthetics and morality converge, fading historic foundations of Western decency into the background by throwing alternative narratives of personal freedom into colourful relief. Kit’s perspectives shock and discombobulate, but they – as a person – are manifestly warm, gentle, thoughtful and (seemingly) refreshingly emotionally healthy at times. Kit’s approach to life, is contrasted to their queer friend and interlocuter Jade, who both exhibits and values attitudes and assumptions associated with conformity. Is Jade subscribing to restrictive or even harmful social norms in some of the ways shared by Tag from A Different Class that stem from expectations to repress emotion? To what extent is there or should there be room for both? This performance left me with more questions than answers, which I loved.

Foodaholix by BLINK is an absolute blast, and a triumph of modern theatre: it’s unadulterated, off-the-wall, surrealist fun;it’s inclusive, light-hearted freedom; it’s a multi-sensory extravaganza; and it’s the opportunity to safely emerge from shells hardened by social traumas associated with societal expectations and toxic positivity around food, partying and being who we are: “Food is love food is hate. You don’t have to go to confession”.

From Delson Weekes’ sparkling performance in the leading role, to Rachel Gildea’s live bread-eating ode to bread (which is just inspired); Sabir Abdul and Chales Oni’s hilarious savage cabbage fighting antics, to Francis Mejekodunmi’sphenomenal performance in burger-drag; not forgetting Vicki Hawkins’ wisely introverted, tear-jerking Makaton-signing ice cream! In fact, the whole thing feels deeply collaborative, and all the actors were superb; oozing with artistic zeal with each movement. Laura Day holds the dynamic performance together; she’s a brilliant dancer and warm creative presence, never centering herself so as to bring out the best in everyone.Foodaholix presents the perfect opportunity to be taken by the hand and led by learning disabled and neurodivergent young artists to a modern wonderland; to jubilantly reject stagnant narratives, and open up new possibilities. “Do not try this at home”, audience members are instructed – “unless you are supervised by a massive carrot”.

(Don’t) Try this at Home is a performance workshop withMunotida Chinyanga’s insatiable obsession for wrestling as its fun-filled, energetic theme. The workshop teaches the basic components of a wrestling match: the significance of the story; gimmicks; spectacle; and audience engagement. This is an opportunity to get up-close and personal at all levels culminating in the live participation of a wrestling match. We physically climbed into the ring before the match started, at which point we were divided into producers, commentators, a referee and the all-important audience chanting for the somewhat unexpected face of Uber or the heel of TFL (“Ohhh transport for Lon-don”, we chanted!). The actors were brilliant and it was interesting to reflect on the performance with their perspective as wrestlers in the mix, exploring concepts such as the suspension of disbelief, the function of story-telling in a wrestling context, and the developing role of women in wrestling.  All the artists were top-notch. Manuel Santon’s generosity of creative energy was contagious, and the immensely talented, eloquent and innovative Munotida Chinyanga had everyone eating out of her hands. She has the vision and the passion to develop this project even further and I can’t wait to see how this workshop evolves.

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