Physical theatre group Tidal Theatre are bringing their show Launa to the Edinburgh Fringe this year. Their director, Rowan Brown, tells us more about the play.
“After the loss of her daughter, young mother Edna must navigate the shifting terrain of grief as memory begins to consume her present. Movement, music, dialogue, puppetry and shadow-play converge in this visually arresting production. Within the cluttered familiarity of her apartment, grief erupts amidst the mundane like the sudden chorus of a song: supermarket flowers, intrusive cold calls and the apparition of Launa herself. This is a world in which the echo of childhood imagination and devastating loss co-exist, asking whether we have to let go of the past to remain present with the living?”
Where: Studio at theSpace @ Niddry St
When: 7-22 Aug
Ticket link: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/launa
What is the show about, and where did the idea come from?
The show is about a young mother who has lost her daughter and is now navigating grief a year after her death. Blending ensemble movement, puppetry and shadow play with a fresh script – Launa is an attempt to explore at least part of the landscape of loss, which moves between dancing wildly to music alone at home to taking cold calls to magical ensemble sequences which recreate the lost world of childhood play.
The show grew from a handful of images and questions rather than one defining moment: the film Arrival and its ideas about motherhood and time, Arcade Fire’s Unconditional, Emma Corrin dancing alone in The Crown, and above all a desire to make a play in which the central event has already happened. What happens when a space becomes defined by absence?
For Edna, grief takes the form of the daughter she never got to know, a twenty-year-old version of Launa imagined from fragments of memory, hope and regret. Like any child, however, this imagined daughter develops a will of her own.
Sell the show to a potential audience in one sentence!
This is grief but in all its shades; it is the wonder of childhood memories, it is sisterhood, it stings, it is joyful, it is hybrid, it is hopeful, it is summer and colour and winter and dancing and hiding away at home all at once.
What does the Fringe mean to you, and do you have any particular memories?
I first came to the Fringe in 2023 as a performer in an adaptation of Don Quixote. I have vivid memories of sprinting up the Royal Mile in a boiler suit playing the flute, lying on the cobbles, and doing a Sainsbury’s shop in the buckets we used as props. I have seen such amazing work at Edinburgh, and I can’t wait to bring Launa to the scene, this time as a director and writer.
What are you looking forward to in Edinburgh?
Aside from the extreme bonding about to take place between my cast and crew as we share a bell tent for an obscene amount of time, I am so excited to see the reception people have to the show in Edinburgh and how it differs from our Oxford run. I’m excited to see which part of the show audiences latch onto. Some people see a play about grief. But others tell us afterwards that it is about sisters, or motherhood, or growing up, or therapy, or childhood. That feels right to me, because grief has a way of touching every other part of life.
What’s next for the show?
I’d love for Launa to have a life beyond Edinburgh, whether that is touring or further development, but right now I’m excited simply to see this new version meet audiences. In November, I’m adapting Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight with Tidal Theatre. Like Launa, it is interested in interior worlds and combines movement with text, but instead of Edna’s flat we’ll be wandering the night-lit streets of Paris.