Episode 297: Edinburgh Festival Series - Puttana

It’s the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026 series Elaine chats with the performer and one of the creative team of Puttana, Beatrice Elena Festi PUTTANA Red Lecture Theatre at Summerhall 6 - 31 August 2026 21:15 (60 mins) PUTTANA ‘A girl needs money, a man needs sex. This trade follows the rule of any market: I pay, therefore I can’ You’ve put on the headphones, now PUTTANA wants you to sit in the witness stand. Featuring experimental soundscape technology to envelop its audience, this fragmented performance from Italian theatre company TeatroE interrogates the sexualisation of women's bodies and the violence that inevitably follows. Forced into sex work to pay her bills, Laura becomes a PUTTANA: a prostitute, a slut, a whore. In this hidden world of competing forces; body and commodity, desire and power, cruel and unforgiving compromises punish some more than others. And so Beatrice Elena Festi embodies five characters; student, sex worker, husband, wife and young man, each with contending desires and intentions. Voices overlap, collapse and emerge, furnishing a narrative experience that defies the simplicity of right and wrong. And when the perspectives are all different, who gets to pass judgement? Using binaural audio technology to create a theatre within the headphones, each audience member enters a three dimensional soundscape, trapped within the boundaries of the bar, the room, the mind. And as the narrative moves between safety and danger with a growing sense of menace, the soundscape looms all around, perhaps the most prominent character of them all, unfixed and impenetrable. A woman needs money, a man needs sex, the beginning is obvious, and everything that follows is a matter of perspective. This commodification of women’s bodies is all around us, and so PUTTANA confronts us with the hard truth about our shared responsibility in its violence - what judgement should be passed upon us? Tickets - https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/puttana OUR WEBSITE - www.persistentandnasty.co.uk IPA GUIDES: HIPA GUIDES Equity Toolkit: Link Stellar Quines: Link Persistent Pal & Nasty Hero - Pals and Hero Membership Email – [email protected] Instagram - @persistentandnasty Twitter - @PersistentNasty Coffee Morning Eventbrite - Coffee Morning Tickets LINKTREE - LINKTR.EE Resources Samaritans - Rape Crisis Scotland - Rape Crisis UK ArtsMinds - BAPAM Freelancers Make Theatre Work Stonewall UK - Trevor Project - Mermaids UK Switchboard LGBT+ - GATE PLANNED PARENTHOOD DONATE - DONATE ABORTION SUPPORT NETWORK UK - ASN.COM- DONATE