In one sentence tell us about your show.
It’s a surreal exploration of brain surgery, mythology and show business; inspired by the  music of Tom Waits, with burlesque, storytelling and puppets.
What made you decide to bring a show this year?
I’ve been creating short comic burlesque pieces as Jeu Jeu la Foille for several years, and I needed to see whether Jeu Jeu had the stamina for an hour long show.
Any advice you've heard or can give to anyone coming to the Fringe for the first time?
It’s like a bubble – magical, directionless, and easily burst. And don’t hug a performer directly after their show, as you’ll probably catch festival flu from their sweat!
What makes your show stand out from all of the others on offer?
It’s enchanting and disturbing, beautiful and strange, and I have  a 4 piece puppet band!
What show, other than your own, do you not want to miss?
Kill The Beast – ‘Don’t Wake the Damp’. It’s an apocalyptic, sci-fi musical…with puppets.
Finally, the boring but essential bit...
Name of the show: Jeu Jeu la Foille: Frontal Lobotomy
Venue: 264 Southside Social, upstairs bar
Dates: 4th – 21st August, not 8th or 15th.
Time: 8.45pm

The previews are done, the suitcase is packed - it weighs a ton - and I leave for Edinburgh early tomorrow. I had a mix of experiences with the previews. The one at the Rosemary Branch was amazingly well-attended and received, but I felt my own performance was lacking. Nerves got the better of me again, and I froze a couple of times. The preview at the Bread and Roses a week later was more intimate in terms of audience, though it was the first time I had properly connected with the piece, and felt I could defend it.

There's no doubt that what I've made is strange, chaotic and difficult to catergorise, but audiences have also called it striking and disturbingly beautiful, and said it made them forget where they were. I took on board the feedback from the first two previews, and by number three it was starting to feel like something was gelling. Here follows a round up of all of the audience comments from preview number three that I can remember:

* It's very beautiful, and once you've done a few shows you won't feel for your lines as much, and using the props will be second nature.
* Watch that your real voice doesn't escape on the lip-synch, it's very good though.
* It's the type of show that would work if you had one person in the audience or a full house, it doesn't rely on the audience like some shows do.
* Play with the piano mime, I love how you discover it works on it's own, you can play with the dimensions now, use it to underpin the words, it's your image so have more fun with it.
* It needs audience interaction now, the frontal lobotomy part should be done on an audience member. Put lipstick on them, make them complicit in your world. Make them feel guilty for laughing at you.
* By the creation myth I totally forgot where I was.
* Scream when you lobotomise yourself.
* Love the puppet band, so much fun.
* Love you way you presented the song.

Here we go, sixteen performances. I'm excited to see what will happen. Xxx

PS: I have a feature coming out for This is Cabaret...more later x

It's incredible to think that just over half a century ago, it was a viable 'cure' for mental illnesses to cut into parts of the brain. To separate sections of the brain, and literally pluck out the sorrows....as if painful thoughts were trapped foreign bodies than needed to be extracted, like a rotting tooth, or a wasp sting.

'Frontal Lobotomy' has it's second public viewing at the Rosemary Branch Theatre last night, and I had an interesting conversation with some friends afterwards about whether it was ever 'a good idea' to give someone a frontal lobotomy...If someone is psychotic, or suicidally depressed, then at least there is a small chance that it could take the pain away. But does pain define our humanity? If we don't feel pain do we have an honest sense of self?

I was asked some probing questions on what point I was making in this piece after the performance last night, questions that I can't fully answer yet. For a piece of theatre that doesn't fit neatly into a style or dramatic territory, and seems to deal with several thematic layers, it's difficult to pin down the overall message.

I know my point of departure was the world of Tom Waits, the impetus to make the piece came from several sudden life events, and the work has unfolded and developed through encompassing the experiences of the past nine months. I've written something that covers mythology, psycho-surgery, psycho-analysis and feminism, and somehow within that what ties those themes together is the sense of self. What is the self? What is My Self?

I start the performance already onstage as the audience enters, with my back to the seating, but viewing the audience through a mirror. The reasons for this image are that through my research I discovered that traumatised individuals have no sense of self - they literally do not recognise themselves in a mirror. The other reason is what Peter Levine calls the Medusa approach to healing, in that we don't face trauma face on, for the danger that it could 'freeze' or re-traumatise us. Instead we tackle it indirectly, such as in the Medusa myth. Perseus doesn't look directly at Medusa, but he can see her reflected in his shield. I don't expect the audience to pick up on these details; the image stands alone as something powerful and visually arresting enough to open the space, and it's a good way of 'meeting the audience', which I've seen other performers do as a way of putting everyone at ease. But maybe it can resonate on a deeper level, I hope so...

So, here is as much of the feedback as I can remember from last night. A large portion of the show did not go as planned, though I was overwhelmed by the support I received from friends in the audience.

* It's very difficult to define what you've made here. It's like a visual representation of a poem, in the Modernist tradition, like TS Elliot.
* It's like a dream. I don't understand it, but it takes me somewhere.
* I'd be happy just seeing you read those poems aloud, but all of the other theatrical elements you've added make it really beautiful.
* You're very powerful onstage, very engaging, but you're being too careful. What's underneath? You could move a lot more. Think about vibrations.
* You seem much more playful than last time, I love how much you engaged with the audience, and the story at the start brought us in.
* Perhaps you get tied to the piano, I think you can let the mime at the start go, and then come back to it. What you're saying is more interesting than the mime.
* I liked the song at the end, own the singing, even if it comes out wrong.
* It's very strange. I don't know what to call it. Maybe performance art is closest.
* The Walter Freeman bits seem to stick out too much, and don't fit with the rest of the style.
* Loved the Showbiz and Apocalypse. Like a sad clown. It was quite dark, not what I was expecting.
* You should try and enjoy it when it goes wrong, it will go wrong now and then.
* The solo puppet is disturbing, and I love the band! Can you make more of them?

I know I've made progress since the last preview in May, and there's so much further I can take it. I feel like after Edinburgh it will be a different show altogether, and I might know the some of the answers to the questions my friends asked me last night.

I have one more London preview to prepare for - Tuesday 26th July at The Bread and Roses in Clapham. I have two rehearsal days to try and work in some changes, but what excites me now, is that I know this piece will never be 'finished', and the mistakes and mishaps are really little gifts. And I'm fine with that!

There is a fairy tale about a lamppost in 'Frontal Lobotomy.' It has some resonances of Narcissus and Echo about it, and was inspired by a nighttime 'drift' in Berlin. The five weeks in Italy that I have recently returned from, gave me some more opportunities for photographing lampposts, except this time I often had company, and had to try and explain why the lampposts of Bra, Turin, Milan, San Remo and Bologna interested me. People found it funny or were intrigued by the story, so here it is in it's current draft;

Once upon a time there was a very tall lamppost. She stood in a garden, just West of a place near a river. Forgive me, I can’t be any more specific. One Winters night, as she was standing, glowing, she happened to glance down at the river near her base, and saw a circle of amber light looking back at her. She had never seen such a pretty colour, all of the other lampposts were white, and she stared at her reflection in disbelief and wonder for a long time.
 
As the dawn came, then so did her tears, for the pretty amber light faded, and the river became a mirror for her long, thin body, which she detested, and now was forced to look at during all of the daylight hours, waiting for the night when her amber light would return, and she could gaze at its reflection. Winter became Spring, and the days grew longer, and she began to see her amber light less and less, until it began to fade to yellow, and then to white. Appalled at her pale reflection by night, and disgusted by the sight of her long, thin body, she detached herself from her post, and floated up higher and higher into the sky. But it was to no avail, for wherever there was water, and the Earth had plenty of that, she was confronted by her pale face.
 
Once a month she turns her face away in relief from the shame, but still the tides in the water pull her back, and for a few nights a month, she faces the full extent of her full and pale light. It is said that those back on Earth who stare too long at her, also lose the colour in their light, float up into the sky and turn away from their reflections. And so there she is, the tallest lamppost in the world.

The feedback from the preview in May seemed to point me towards referencing the lobotomy content in more depth, so I have removed three poems that I felt were weakest, and replaced them with some scientific explanation. I intend to perform these new sections as a grotesque caricature of Walter Freeman, this I hope will give more vocal and character variation.
I have looked into presenting the different pieces in a more physical and playful way, and introduced some visual elements. The thought was that I didn't need anymore words; just to play with the words I did have. One suggestion was to have some kind of magic trick, and as there are several moments where light in mentioned during the piece, I ordered some d'lites, and have been watching video tutorials, like the one below;

The next preview is on July 20th at The Rosemary Branch Theatre, and I'm about to enter an intense week of rehearsing, music editing, learning new skills and essentially re-drafting the whole piece. See you on the other side xx