Pro­duced by ‘Woman’s Move’ from Switzer­land and co-dir­ec­ted by cho­reo­graph­ers Elsa Couvreur and Iona D’Annunzio. The Sense­maker starts as a clev­er and under­stated com­edy that uses dance, move­ment and sound as its main devices. Theatre like this is at its best when min­im­al and per­fectly timed, which is a key strength of The Sense­maker.

The Fringe pro­gramme describes the piece as a ‘dysto­pi­an battle between a woman and an answer­ing machine.’

We have all had our patience tested when on hold, or jump­ing hoops of a bur­eau­crat­ic sys­tem. The wait­ing, the repet­it­ive instruc­tions and music, the back and for­wards between dif­fer­ent depart­ments, the non­sensic­al auto­ma­tion, the feel­ing of not get­ting any­where and just as you are about to give up, a small moment of pro­gress.

This show beau­ti­fully finds the light-hearted com­edy of this exper­i­ence we all know and takes it to a sur­real­ist realm. The prot­ag­on­ist is com­mit­ted to hav­ing their request acknow­ledged by the mys­tery ser­vice. They remain resi­li­ent against every hurdle and we the audi­ence become inves­ted in this with them exper­i­en­cing all the joy of their suc­cess and des­pair when they are chal­lenged.

The piece reminded me of all the times we have to exer­cise per­sist­ence in our lives and per­haps go bey­ond what may be neces­sary to prove ourselves. The meta­phor of the show brings out the anguish of job inter­views, audi­tions, nav­ig­at­ing health sys­tems and legis­lat­ive pro­cesses and brings to light the vul­ner­ab­il­ity we are exposed to when our needs place power in some­thing out­side ourselves. This show makes us ask the ques­tion ‘when is it enough?’ ‘when is it too much?’ and how easy it is to go bey­ond what we are com­fort­able with once we feel we have already inves­ted so much of ourselves in an out­come.

Myself and my friends were moved from laughter to tears as the show mas­ter­fully invited us to be a part of the jour­ney and at times gave us the unease of feel­ing com­pli­cit in the prot­ag­on­ist’s hurt.

It is innov­at­ive theatre like this that reminds me why I go to see inde­pend­ent artists, so that we might see anoth­er way to exper­i­ence the world. I think being on hold will nev­er be the same again.