I'm Ready to Talk Now @ Traverse Theatre

In I’m Ready to Talk Now, Oliver Ayres from Melbourne greets me warmly and asks how I’m doing. We chat about my trip to the Traverse, his accommodation in a picturesque part of Edinburgh and his sold-out run. “Not bad for a first Fringe, right?”

The performance doesn’t take place in a theatre, but in a separate room set up like a hospital. When I ask if I can use the coat rack, Ollie gently directs me to place my things on a chair beside the compact hospital bed at the centre of the space. He invites me to climb in, covering me with a hand-embroidered cellular blanket marked with dates from 2016. I feel like Goldilocks. The bed, fairy-tale small, is perfect for me.

Ollie’s upbeat energy contrasts with the room’s soft nostalgia: warm yellow lighting, textured fabrics, a vintage biscuit tin filled with sensory toys. I choose a squishy ice cube. Ayres' curls and angelic expression add to the heightened gentleness.

Access is foregrounded. Ollie spends ten minutes explaining options: captions, audio description, sensory orientation. As someone on my own neurodivergent journey of self-acceptance, I appreciate this care. Later, with headphones on, I hear Ollie describe a sudden illness: trouble breathing, blistered mouth and the hospital’s suggestion that testosterone might be to blame. Responsibility is subtly pushed onto him, and guilt is quietly absorbed.

STOZ’s sound design is stylishly evocative of the output of dreampop record label 4AD; gothic, haunting, and ethereal. Projections and lighting by Isabella ‘Iz’ Zettl complement it beautifully, creating a dreamlike world for just one audience member at a time. Everything is pre-programmed, timed to unfold seamlessly while Ollie performs solo movement looking directly at me. It’s a clever feat of minimalism and invisible precision.

The piece isn’t so much about naming a single, seemingly banal act of anti-trans discrimination – “You don’t look like the person on your Medicare ID” – but about evoking the atmosphere around it. In its very inability to pinpoint harm, the piece reveals just how deeply pain runs. What lingers is quiet grief, and the weight of trying to articulate and make sense of a world that punishes difference.

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I'm Ready to Talk Now, Traverse Theatre (Traverse Above), until 24 August, £5-25