Eleanor Thom guides writers found throughout local communities into a charming wee performance, a network of monologues charting feelings, thoughts, and self-expression.
Citizen has been running since 2018, an Edinburgh International Book Festival initiative to promote writing amongst the citizens across Edinburgh & East Lothian. Eleanor Thom, Communities Writer in Residence has overseen the programme since inception, this year guiding 18 (The QR believes) writers to produce One Day Ticket.
Essentially an anthology of monologues, and deeply personal poems, the performance is tied together by a fantastical transport map linking ideas, rather than geographical locations. Accordingly the gathered actors board, and depart from an imaginary train, or perhaps a tram, as it journeys from such places as ‘Book’ to ‘Regret’, thence to ‘Letting off Steam’ where one might change for the ‘Letting off steam’ line.
Journeying through this abstract land, these places and links prompt the sharing of a wide range of responses, from amusing takes on indecisiveness, to angry elegies for a nation unable to mount a suitably angry response to the depredations of austerity government. As our journeys with these interchanging avatars of others’ thoughts continue, they almost meld to create a multi-stranded stream of consciousness.
More than a play, One Day Ticket is really a rare chance to experience moments inside the heads of many others. It would be missing the point to single out particular passages, or actors for praise. It would be meaningless to compare reflections on a difficult pregnancy, to a poem of self-acceptance. One Day Ticket is a celebration of self-expression, and we should celebrate it in return.
The Quinntessential Review sees no point in ascribing star evaluations to author events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Such events often succeed or fail based on audience performance as much as those involved in the formal Q&A segments. Further, authors are not performers, and as such, scoring their public performance seems a tad daft.
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