REVIEW: Get Off, Katy Baird, EdFringe 2025 ★★★★

Katy Baird wants to show us all of herself. After checking in with her life coach, Stephen, she invites the whole audience onstage in an effort to connect, to feel the expensive white dance floor beneath our feet, and to participate in some breathing exercises before the show begins. 

She reads from her mate Bunny’s new script, a journey of processing trauma, all set on a mountain top in a blizzard. As Baird gets pulled in multiple directions, befriending audience members and interacting with a filmed version of herself, the pathway to pleasure becomes rockier by the minute. 

No-one in that room will forget this experience, myself included. Baird lies almost nude on the floor as we enter, and a million possibilities extend themselves as to the circumstances, and how Baird has come to be here. 

Baird is evidently skilled in forging relationships with her audience. Her uninhibited appearance encourages us to lay bare, to forget about the fourth wall and claim this show as our own. It’s whatever we make of it, and Baird is present merely as a tourist guide to a whole assortment of fantasies. 

Get Off doesn’t just tread the line between the radical and the accommodating, it stomps back and forth across it. Like an onion, we peel back Baird’s layers, sometimes making us weep, and sometimes making us shut our eyes to deal with the sting. 

Would it have been preferable for Baird to not show a video of herself defecating over a toilet bowl? And would it have been even more preferable to not see it from another, closer angle? Sure. But then again, why the hell not? Does it make me a bad feminist to not want to see a queer performer shitting on camera? I can’t tell.

Rarely do we get to see someone who looks, acts, and speaks like Katy Baird onstage, so it feels like an honour to have witnessed just a sliver of her work. She challenges us to see her, all of her. 

The videos of her doing line after line of ketamine confront us with some tricky truths, but they force us to see her as a flawed human being. A woman not trying to be palatable, not desperate to fit into societal beauty norms, and it’s entirely thrilling. 

Many performers dream of connecting with their audience, but Baird demonstrates a commitment to connection that is laudable. Truly, I’ve not stopped thinking about it since I left. 

Recommended Drink: Mouthwash.

Performances of Get Off have now concluded at EdFringe 2025.