Lamesha Ruddock
I AM – A Walking Universe by LULA.XYZ is confession and a confrontation, a universe opening in real time. This is a show that commands with urgency and humour.
I AM – A Walking Universe is an interrogation into the unknown universe that is the body of a woman that the world refuses to nourish and help. The show questions the development of fibroids and other manifestations of PCOS that are often labelled a Black woman’s curse despite affecting white people too. Lula Mebrahtu rightly quips that the name shows you exactly what they are going to do about it.
What follows is a searingly honest exploration of the medical and social silences that surround Black women’s health. I AM – A Walking Universe is brave and intimate, blending innovative technological experimentation with devastating truths.
LULA.XYZ, tired of the commentary on her body and apprehensive about unloading trauma onto others, seeks to release the pain she has been carrying for four years by any means possible. As the audience enters, we are greeted by LULA.XYZ scrolling through funding rejection emails. The atmosphere immediately sets a tension between hope and dismissal.
She asks if we can see her as LULA.XYZ as minimal light floats across the room. At the Edinburgh Fringe she hasn’t been seen. As a Habesha woman and as a Black woman she hasn’t been seen by the medical industry either.
She demonstrates the dehumanisation she experienced from medical professionals who refused to humanise themselves, using a robotic reverberating voice as they provide excuse after excuse to deny her requests for safety.
LULA.XYZ is playful and responsive. As she spirals into the realisation that she is never quite safe, she turns more and more to the audience, asking us to witness. She brings to life the endless assumptions of pregnancy, as she tries to live with a fibroid. Her storytelling is a collage of brief projections and memories: herself with a baby bump, Paris Hilton kissing a woman’s belly who was not pregnant, and the triggering face of Boris Johnson. Chaotic yet precise, these images mirror the intrusive gazes and legislation that stalk her body.
The show’s theatrical language is bold and inventive, with technology allowing the creator to become performer and operator simultaneously. Red flashes echo as she bounce. A bright warm spotlight isolates her as she bellows for the audience to shout the names of women who birthed humankind. The response is not loud enough, not even close.
I AM – A Walking Universe is theatre of cruelty and theatre of care at once. When LULA.XYZ goads the “small dick men” of the crowd, the sting is sharp but only a morsel of her reality. The audience experience is visceral, moving from laughter to discomfort to awe. This show is, put simply, a demand for empathy and change.
You can catch I AM – A Walking Universe until Sunday 24th at Iron Belly at Underbelly, Cowgate from 17:10 (60mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Jasmine Silk
Phoebe Bakker
