Monumental: The new show commemorating Edinburgh's invisible women
"We want people to feel the city differently after Monumental" – we take a look at F-Bomb's new feminist project
This year, the city of Edinburgh is celebrating its 900th(-ish) birthday with the Edinburgh 900. The programme includes dozens of varied events, from lectures to parades. F-Bomb, a feminist theatre company based in Edinburgh, is contributing a new project called Monumental.
Monumental, written by Hannah Low, Jaïrus Obayomi, Rachel O’Regan, Kirin Saeed and Emery Schaffer, takes the form of a walking tour dedicated to the un-commemorated female figures from Edinburgh's history. Playwright, producer and dramaturg O'Regan positions the project as an attempt to resist a "cultural canon" that routinely marginalises women.
O'Regan says that there are "eight statues of named women in Edinburgh, 14 of animals, and 79 of men." I've heard this, too; O'Regan calls it a "clear disparity in stone and bronze." It's one comparably minor result, she says, of a broader landscape of inequity. "The historical marginalisation of women… continues today. Art, culture and history should be for everyone to shape, contribute to and experience."
But F-Bomb isn't about the glossy veneer of girlboss feminism. O'Regan says: "Since the First Wave, feminist movements have often centred the experiences of white, middle-class, able-bodied women – it’s important to acknowledge and challenge that legacy." After the success of their Fringe hit, The Beatles Were A Boyband, F-Bomb has a lot of feminist momentum to carry forward. A walking tour is one innovative answer to the question of how theatremakers can invite audiences to engage in the story in a more active way. In a move toward making the experience more accessible, tickets in the small audiences for the tour will be pay-what-you-can allocated via a raffle.
As a transplant to Edinburgh, I've been on my fair share of walking tours (voluntarily. I enjoy them). But most of them involve some sort of story about how a 50-year-old writer married his teenaged student, or how a surgeon murdered eight people to use as cadavers. They often mention the horrific violence done to women seen as "witches." Edinburgh is the perfect city for a walking tour; if you go on enough of them, you come to know Edinburgh as it wants to present itself – that is, as a place with a salacious history and a moderate to high volume of the macabre. As far as 'things to do in Edinburgh' go, the walking tour could be considered a staple. It makes perfect sense, then, to marry it with live theatre, another of this city's beloved pastimes.
O'Regan says that the "walking tour format is key to the experience and we're really excited! It invites the audience to physically move through this very old city, to visually and publicly occupy spaces where women’s stories have historically been absent."
Among the many luminaries featured in Monumental, O'Regan continues, "Clara Marguerite Christian was the first black woman to enrol at University of Edinburgh; Maggie Dickson was a working-class woman whose story touches on reproductive rights; and Saint Triduana was a visually impaired servant to the church. Each of the stories show womanhood not as a monolith, but a complex identity shaped by diverse lived experiences."
In light of recent attempts by the Supreme Court and the UK Government to 'define' what a woman is, F-Bomb released a statement condemning the ruling. This chimes with the stated message of Monumental, a project that re-maps Edinburgh as a city that also belongs to marginalised people. There are roads for theatre companies to take big swings, so to speak – to stand consistently and unequivocally with the marginalised through their platforms and their work.
Monumental, central Edinburgh, 10 & 17 May, tickets via fbombtheatre.co.uk/monumental