Most of us have the good fortune to wake from a nightmare and thank God it’s over. But what if your nightmare never ended? What if it became part of your everyday existence? The Weight of Shadow by performance artist Sasha Krohn is physical theatre at its finest and a powerful examination of the interior life of a person on the edge. Now performing at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, this is compelling, visceral storytelling that pulls no punches.
Based on Krohn’s partner’s struggles with mental health, it employs dance, aerial, mime and physical storytelling to portray a day in the life of someone suffering from what appears to be extreme anxiety and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).
It opens with blue light on a bare stage. The set, littered with rubbish, a single bed, a few scraps of old furniture and a mirror, evokes poverty and desperation. Ominous music plays as Krohn wakes and looks around with dread. It’s time to face another day and everything is a struggle of monumental proportions. The act of getting out of bed and getting dressed requires a Herculean effort and Krohn performs an agonising ritual as he struggles to get into his clothes, his body contorting with the effort. It evokes the struggle of the physically disabled to perform basic tasks, the homeless to get their basic needs met and the psychologically disturbed to function normally.
If getting dressed is hard, getting out the door is virtually impossible. We see our protagonist struggle with all sorts of demons as he attempts to put the key in the lock, and then the key takes on a life of its own, leading him on a tortured dance around the stage to avoid leaving the flat. Once out of the flat his terror is palpable. He walks to what looks like an interview with a social service of some kind. Could it be a parole officer? A job agency? Or maybe it’s a boss? In any case, he is bullied mercilessly and his anxiety skyrockets.
Krohn effectively shines a spotlight on the invisible suffering of the tormented, the grief-stricken, the traumatised, the disabled and the dispossessed. The quote, ‘Art is meant to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed’, by poet Cesar A Cruz came to mind viewing this theatre. It is Theatre of Cruelty, Grand Guignol and Grotesque, performed magnificently. It is not comfortable or funny. It does not sugarcoat suffering the way so many Fringe shows do, but amplifies it.
It is hard theatre to watch, but as someone who has suffered a host of physical and mental health problems since the death of my son three years ago, I felt profoundly seen, heard and validated and imagine anyone else who is bearing the unbearable would experience the same thing watching this extraordinary work.
Read: Festival reviews: Edinburgh Festival Fringe, various venues
There are some incredible grotesque nightmare sequences where Krohn employs aerial acrobatics to evoke the desperate desire for ascension – whether through death or spiritual connection.
An exquisite soundtrack consisting of opera and Gregorian chants elevates our broken protagonist to a type of sainthood – pointing to the fact that every human being deserves compassion and dignity, even our most broken. At the play’s end, Krohn has elevated the banal, the invisible and the downtrodden into high art.
This is truly great theatre.
The Weight of Shadow will be performed at Assembly Checkpoint during Edinburgh Festival Fringe until 25 August 2024.
