REVIEW, Our Other Organ, NoLands, #DANISH, EdFringe 2026 ★★★★

Boaz Barkan’s Our Other Organ is, in some ways, a very austere piece of theatre. It leaves a lingering impression, it grows. This might be one of the most brilliantly understated acts at the Fringe, each concept growing, each word acquiring new meaning, and that body at the centre burning further into your mind. 

It is a performance lecture, so it begins with Barkan reflecting on the performance itself, its first iteration. He remembers a bust of Hippocrates, an important Ancient Greek physician. He links the act of anatomy to spectacle, and invokes a Renaissance medic. Then, he invites the most ‘perfect’ white man he knows onto the stage. The man, Joel Degerdelt, is a circus performer. He undresses. An anatomy begins. 

The lecture is fascinating. The associations are vast and intrinsically theatrical. Sometimes lecture theatre doesn’t quite work because it forgets that attention is a currency in this medium, not here. Barkan is prescient and precise, and his speech contextualises what follows in its surreality. 

Barkan claims to have found the organ in which racism resides, our other organ. He asks for us to feel it in ourselves. He begins to push skin into Degerdelt – sometimes it looks like he’s breaking his bones. This is an intensely physical performance, almost wince-inducing at times.

Barkan speaks viscerally of purple veins stemming from this other organ, this racism, all through the body. He unapologetically links it to his own Jewish family, and he speaks of smell, how it makes us assume certain things. The piece, in a rather brilliant and slippery manner becomes about victims and perpetrators, and ends with a blood-splattering coup. 

It’s complicated stuff, but supremely intelligent. It is an intensely accomplished piece of theatre, even more so when you consider how stripped back it is. Lighting onstage is operated by the performers. Their speech and body is all that is present; the piece is almost nothing — simply idea and image.

Sometimes, I struggled to identify precisely where in my body Barkan was telling me where to look or feel, and the piece almost lost me then. But it functions so well that you can’t help but focus on it, let it crawl under your skin. 

For a piece composed of idea and image to speak so broadly and compellingly about racism, its universality, how it slips into our minds, is a feat. Our Other Organ is a subtly incendiary theatre. What a privilege the festival still affords spaces for this tricky, but unforgettable work. 

Recommended Drink: A shot of espresso. A shock to the system you really needed.

You can catch Our Other Organ until 31st August at Summerhall (Anatomy Lecture Theatre) at 16.15 (50 minutes). Tickets available through the EdFringe website.