Laura Thurlow brings her new show, River Time, to Edinburgh Fringe this summer.
“When times get tough, sometimes a gal just needs to take some River Time.“
Where: Greenside at Riddles Court
When: 2-10, 12-17, 19-24 Aug
Ticket link: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/river-time
Laura tells us more …
What are you looking forward to the most at Fringe?
Connection – with audiences and with other artists, performers, theatremakers.
There’s nothing like the Fringe for breaking down barriers between people.
Tell me about River Time. It’s described as “a zany, comic, heartfelt show about choosing not to drown yourself”. What was the inspiration behind it, and what should audiences expect?
So! This all began from my excitement and confusion as I learned more about adult ADHD and my particular corner of neurodiversity and the fears and anxieties that govern my existence.
I was at a social mixer in a pub in Soho for lonely young people that ended for me, as things often do, in tears.
I was sitting with someone, having a conversation, when he said he had to get a glass of water from the bar and that I should ‘wait right there’ as ‘he’d be right back.’
When he re-emerged, he went and sat at the opposite end of the table from me. And my brain just melted down, I went out crying into the street, cursing myself for having such an outlandish reaction to what was essentially nothing at all.
I called my autistic friend and explained to her that I was pretty sure I was dying (as the result of a minor social rebuff from a complete stranger) and she told me to look up Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria.
So I did, and in doing so read a lengthy WebMD article about my entire personality. ‘Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria’ summed me up as an entity – everything about the way I experience the world in three words.
It was an awakening and a heartbreaking one at that. So I wanted to talk about it, and in the end, this show is what I have to say.
River Time as a phrase is an old joke between friends of mine that every time I see a river I think about jumping in (as every woman does crave the cold sanctuary of dark waters).
I went to university in Edinburgh and used to go out on the town like 3-4 nights a week, end up feeling rejected in some form or another (somebody I liked would look at me wrong, my friend would say I looked weird dancing) and I would calm myself down by walking all the way up the Water of Leith to the sea in the middle of the night.
Taking literal river time was my best and only tool for emotional regulation.
River Time became shorthand for an RSD meltdown – an episode of extreme emotional pain brought on by the experience of rejection. A desire to leap into cleansing waters, to go the way of Ophelia or perhaps even Virginia Woolf.
So I started writing about these two women, one fictional, one real – one at the periphery of a story and the other the author of many, and in doing so I started to write about myself… and the kind of worldview I’ve stumbled into, that you are either an Ophelia or a Virginia – you are either object, or author.
Either way, you’re going to end up in the river. What becomes of the madwoman who is neither a success nor a beautiful corpse?
It ended up getting darker as I wrote it… and I now realise that more than anything this is a show about shame, and the ways it staves off hope.
This is a show for you if you like weird & wordy stuff, it’s a show for anyone who has ever felt crazy.
What do you enjoy most about being a solo performer?
I have the freedom and flexibility of independence! That said I dream of meeting the collaborators that would bring all of this stuff to the next level.
I have a great script written that would require two other performers, and I would love to meet a director I really click with.
But I started performing my own work after the COVID lockdowns out of a desire to platform myself, ‘put myself out there’ I suppose rather than waiting for an invitation to do so which has been the mindset I have often been stuck in and is actually a central theme of this River Time!’ piece.
It’s a hard thing to decide that your work is important and worth doing if there’s no one else around to validate that belief, but you can waste a lot of life waiting around for validation.
Your medium is poetry – what first drew you to write and perform in this way?
Sort of answered this above I suppose. I went to film school and was told that the most important reason to go to film school is to meet your creative and collaborative partners – it just never really happened for me.
So I felt stuck because the art I wanted to make was so resource intensive and so teamwork based, and I realised it might be years before I have the opportunity to make another film.
But in the meantime, I have stories I want to tell, and writing I want to do – and in the wake of the COVID lockdown with a lot of my filmmaker dreams feeling dashed, I saw that my remaining resource was myself – my body, my voice, my ability as a performer.
So, I’m a writer first, and a performer as a means to an end. I have always written poetry, and I think it’s the most accessible art form for its brevity and elegance.
What’s next for you after Fringe?
I’m finishing up my Masters of Literature in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow for which I’m writing a novel.
Perhaps I’ll do River Time again, post-fringe, if anyone would like to see it.
Maybe bigger and better things, maybe I’ll spend the rest of the year perfecting my focaccia recipe and hanging out with my cat.
I do have lots of ideas, and there’s nothing but time.