SScroll through the listings on the Edfringe app and you’ll see that dozens of productions have been cancelled since their announcement. These ghosts at the fest are a reminder of how difficult it is to put on a show, whether at the world’s biggest arts festival or not.
Among the 2022 cancellations was Dance Body, choreographed by writer and performer Yolanda Mercy, who previously had a hit with Quarter Life Crisis. Now she returns to the spotlight with the story of 33-year-old British-Nigerian playwright Ade, who navigates the rocky road to get her script on stage at a major London theater. Ade is patronized by producers, replaced as lead by an influencer meant to drive more ticket sales, and slowly erased from her storyline. The project’s future is threatened by forces outside her control, but Ade still wonders if she is to blame.
The same question arises when Ade visits a theater where she is applying for a position as associate dramaturg. In the stalls, she is asked to take a seat by a couple and an usher. They are mistakenly convinced that she is sitting in the wrong seat. The matter is resolved rudely and the embarrassing self-doubt remains with Ade, not them. The play she is watching, which is about slavery, is presented to a predominantly white audience and she is subsequently mistaken for one of the actors.
In a show that looks at the industry from every angle, Mercy delivers an often raw, poignant performance that nonetheless maintains an easy warmth. She captures the blushing sense of shame that has followed Ade since her education as a working-class scholarship student at a private school, where her achievements were marred by racism and classism. That experience inspired her screenplay Day Girl. But Ade also feels uncomfortable among friends in south London, where she is not seen as “endz enough” and is automatically assumed to live a life of luxury as “booked, busy and blessed”.
What success actually looks like for aspiring playwrights is openly explored as a seemingly endless cycle of unpaid applications and development. Technically, you’re not working, a friend jokes, and the pain comes from knowing they’re both right and wrong. Such bittersweet humor is a constant. Mercy dissects the subtexts and signals of script meetings where statements are disguised as questions, and delves deeply into how artists are (not) supported by theaters in the long term.
It’s a disarmingly frank show that clearly addresses the box-ticking and pigeonholing of the industry, as well as its reticence to accept failure amid the hysteria surrounding a hit. What struck me most, though, was Mercy’s empathy for artists, and the obligation they feel to those their show represents. That empathy extends to anyone working in the melting pot of marginalized communities, which can be an unforgiving experience. After opening with a refreshing reflection on where festival-goers’ ticket money goes, she ends with a generous gesture toward other acts. Whether her productions appear on the festival’s “sold out” boards or are marked “canceled” on the app, it’s always worth remembering the Beckettian ambition to simply fail better.
