Lamesha Ruddock
“Searching for something is affirmation you don’t have it.”
Ansa Edim’s Is This Normal?, directed by Sriya Sarkar, is a heart-achingly honest storytelling show that puts the chaos of dating and knowing one’s self-worth under the spotlight. With humour and vulnerability, Is This Normal? takes us through the messy path to self-acceptance.
The show interrogates the adultification of Black girls and forces you to ask the question: is that normal? Edim navigates the leering of men and how that attention becomes tied to self-worth. She laments a lifetime of attention that never felt good. From there you can see the pipeline for her penchant for nonchalant men and the absurdity of how many times you can get engaged without your knowledge.
Is This Normal? Edim invites us into her coming-of-age experience from how parental pressure and late blooming shaped her world. The show peels back the ridiculousness of what women, particularly Black women, are expected to normalise in the pursuit of love.
Edim takes us from childhood to her high school sweetheart, from trails of condoms leading her to a lover to a fiancé with an auntie who “Get Out’ed” her. The episodical stories are deeply personal yet familiar. By laying bare her most cringe-worthy and confusing moments she creates a mirror for audiences to reflect on what they too have normalised.
Edim enters stage in a black shirt and black trousers with a black overshirt dotted with rows of small rainbow hearts. She is smiley, bearing through the pain. She demonstrates her lead to initiate when she thinks baking cookies is an euphemism, and her naivety when she believes the guy she just bumped into, who said he would be over in fifteen minutes, just wanted to chat. Her male-centric exploration of life feels like it could have been rooted out by giving a voice to the women in her life, like those who go on the Tulum trip.
As she portrays her mother, lovers and soon-to-be in-laws who definitely stormed the Capitol, I did yearn for more character distinction to fully build the world she was going for. Yet her performance remains magnetic and compelling, always keeping the audience invested. The direction by Sriya Sarkar keeps the pace lively, never letting us sit too long in discomfort.
Is This Normal? thrives because of Ansa Edim’s willingness to sit in the unfairness of their pain. It does not always answer the questions it raises but that is the point. Audiences leave Is This Normal? laughing, wincing and reconsidering how much they have allowed “normal” to be defined by other people’s comfort.
You can catch Is This Normal? until Saturday 23rd at Theatre 3 at theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall from 19:05 (50mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Jasmine Silk
Phoebe Bakker
