Gothenburg Fringe 2024 in review: Welcome Home, You're Needy (sounds frustrating), Back to Square One?
For the third year in a row, Ceri Taylor was one of our star volunteers at the festival and made sure to catch a variety of performances during the 10-day festival week to compile a series of reviews.
Welcome Home by Storm Dunder
As Gothenburg Fringe Festival flew through its ninth edition in 2024, for the first time ever, they facilitated a ‘Fringe Feast’ - an industry event where volunteers,
artists and audience members alike could network, enjoy delicious food and a well-deserved glass of wine before enjoying a show from one of the artists of this year’s festival. Pizza and wine at Quality Hotel 11 is fantastic, but nothing beats an intimate performance of Welcome Home by Storm Dunder.
Non-binary transmasculine artist Storm Dunder brings a multidisciplinary
performance including music, live vocals and audiovisual material to create a one hour show which chronologically documents how Dunder’s voice changed during their first year on testosterone.
Accompanied by a high fashion band on keyboard, bass, electric guitar and a
drummer who attended two rehearsals before pulling off the live performance, Welcome Home is a visceral and multi-sensory experience from start to finish. This show is especially poignant at a time where queer people are still facing backlash, austerity and even violence against expressing their true selves.
Dunder is one of many queer people who have battled to get to where they are today, and most still have a long way to go. Scantily clad in a steampunk inspired costume, powering through sickness and a broken violin, Dunder harmonises with a recording of their own voice before they started testosterone which was a mesmerising experience.
Dunder is living proof that it is possible not only to survive but to thrive. There is so much to live for, and you will find someone to welcome you home.
You're Needy (sounds frustrating) by tasteinyourmouth
Gathenhielmska Huset is the oldest building in Gothenburg. A 17th century pirate
house, the venue is the perfect setting for murder mysteries, late-night seances, or to reintegrate a woman back into the throes of society while she meditates in the bathtub.
Fringe certainly lived up to its name on this one.
You’re Needy, Sounds Frustrating is a one-one one immersive theatre piece brought
to the Gothenburg Fringe Festival by Irish artist trio tasteinyourmouth. Each session lasts around thirty minutes and is different every time based on who is in the room - that means you! Therefore this is the only time I would encourage you not to read this review.
Experiencing it firsthand is the best way to consume this piece, and going in blind makes it that much more fun. The assailant facts, however, are these:
Do not enter the house through the front door. It will be locked, and you will be
standing there like a lemon. Go around the back into the garden and wait for someone to come and take you in.
Follow them into the house, up the stairs and into the bathroom. Listen to what they
say, and take what they give you. Carey will be in the bathtub waiting for you.
Close the door behind you and take a seat on the stool beside the bathtub.
The rest is up to you. Sit quietly and watch or join in all the way through. Take note of what’s in the room and find a way to get Carey well again.
You’re Needy, Sounds Frustrating is an intense and immersive experience whose
content features strobe lighting, mental health and eating disorders.
Back to Square One? by Rebel Alliance Theatre
The spring of 2020 is a memorable time for everyone. At the very start of the
COVID-19 lockdown, everyone dealt with the ‘new normal’ in different ways. Maybe you took up knitting, or learned to play guitar for the first time. In my neck of the woods (across the north sea in the UK) everyone and their dog got up in the morning to follow along with remote PE sessions led by Joe Wicks. During The COVID-19 lockdown it was more important than ever to find ways to come together.
Artist and writer Anders Falstie-Jensen found inspiration in the isolation of COVID-19 and invented Back to Square One. How lucky are we that he didn’t start crocheting.
Originally designed for driveways, car parks and cul-de-sacs, people could sit on the porch and watch the show without breaking the restrictions. One man and a box of chalk, Falstie-Jensen takes the Viking myth of Ragnarok and his ninety-five year old grandmother from Denmark and creates an interactive, collaborative and highly entertaining piece of theatre. The COVID-19 pandemic is far behind us now, so the audience at the Gothenburg Fringe Festival gathered in the cosy foyer of Eriksbergshallen rather than a back garden or the front of somebody’s driveway (although how fun that would have been).
Using Crayola-brand chalk and a little imagination, Falstie-Jensen immersed us into Inga’s living room in Denmark, under the roots of the tre tree of life wherein the foreboding death dragon is waiting to set the world on fire, even all the way to New Zealand, where Falstie-Jensen calls home.
Fostering connection, understanding and child-like play, the show endeavoured to
remind us that despite kilometres, seas and the occasional worldwide pandemic, we are not so far away as we might think. There is always a way to bring people together. In that, Back to Square One succeeded.
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