“When doctors couldn’t find me cures, I trawled the internet for solutions”
BY ELLA EVANS, IMAGE BY NOEMIE REIJNEN
My solo comedy show, Femme Fatigue, is about a queer young femme who is diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue. In the wake of COVID-19 and long COVID-19, chronic exhaustion is a widespread condition. My diagnosis pre-dated this phenomenon, but the experience still resonates.
I grew up in a rural, straight-leaning small town and dreamed of freedom; of buzzing with my freest queer life, a chaos-jackal of sorts. Instead, I found myself bed-bound. Initially, my condition was met with suspicion, incomprehension, andeven dismissal as a yuppy disease. When doctors couldn’t find me cures, I trawled the internet for solutions.
My experience living with a chronic condition is that symptom relief isn’t linear, it is cyclical. And at times, wildly unpredictable. My relationship to time has strayed far from the norm. Perhaps it is queerer? Chronic illnesses are, by their very nature, chronic, recurring. So it was important to me to create a show in which the central character does not arrive at recovery. Instead, her journey is towards acceptance. Acceptance is, of course, easier said than done.
One of the first questions people inevitably ask me about chronic fatigue is: have you recovered? We want illness to be neatly divided into before and after: a linear progression towards recovery. I think a great question to ask people with a chronic condition is not, have you recovered? But instead, how is the experience for you? When people lead with curiosity, I love it, and see it as an invitation to share hilarious anecdotes and/or an inventory of hours in bed or spent sprawled on the chaise lounge, giving Victorian heroine in recline.
At a preview of the show an actor who also has Chronic Fatigue told me of the anger they felt coming to terms with their condition. I just wanted to have an illness that was more dramatic, he confessed. It really tickled me with its truth.
It is an interesting challenge to take a show about a condition that has at its core, a lot of stasis, to the largest performing arts festival in the world. The Edinburgh Fringe is a daunting physical challenge for anyone. Hell, a circuit comedian told me. It’s a circus, and the bar is in hell. But a period of relative energy has allowed me to create this show. And I hope to tell this story with appropriate pathos whilst pedalling my favourite absurdist and irreverent humour.
You can find Ella Evans performing Femme Fatigue at the Edinburgh Fringe 14-25t August, Hootenannies, Wee Yurt. And on Instagram @ellaevanscomedy. Ella Evans is represented by Zoe Ross, at United Agents.
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