“It’s required us to practice a great deal of trust, courage and compassion for ourselves and each other.”
WHO: Tana Sirois
WHAT: “An autobiographical comedy that follows a queer, demisexual woman as she attempts to transcend her fears so she can find true love. When her intrusive thoughts manifest as monsters made of plastic bags, she is forced to confront her OCD. Can she experience love while staying true to herself? Or will her desire for intimacy snowball into the worst-case scenario? Praised by FringeReview.co.uk as ‘vulnerable’, ‘brave’ and ‘daring work’, UnTethered has played in Istanbul, NYC, London and Brighton with audiences crediting Tana Sirois as ‘a warrior of emotions’ in a ‘knockout performance’.”
WHERE: Fern Studio at Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236)
WHEN: VARIES (60 min)
MORE: Click Here!
Is this your first time to Edinburgh?
This is our first time at Edinburgh Fringe! UnTethered premiered at the Istanbul Fringe Festival, in September, and since then, we’ve toured the show to NYC, London and Brighton. We have enjoyed all of our runs, but I must say there is something about this piece that just works so well in a fringy environment. One of our recent reviews credited the show as a disarmingly raw and vulnerable show that is “perfect fringe fodder”, which really tickled me. UnTethered is part one-woman show, part mass-dating event, so an environment like Edinburgh Fringe, which I expect contains a good amount of artsy folk who are open to connection, passionate about mental health, and longing to move beyond the traditional gendered binary, is really the perfect place for UnTethered.
What are the big things you’ve learned since 2024 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?
The primary lesson of 2025 seems to be “leap and the net will appear”, which is a bit ironic considering UnTethered is all about my intolerance of uncertainty! Touring this show around the world with a three-person team has been such an exciting, exhausting, rewarding, and meaningful ride. It’s required us to practice a great deal of trust, courage and compassion for ourselves and each other, and I think these lessons have really reverberated on a larger scale for all of us and impacted our lives in quite a significant way.
Tell us about your show.
To be honest, part of me wrote this show because I was extremely fed up with explaining how my OCD gets in the way of love and intimacy to potential partners. At some point in early 2023, a fantasy emerged — I would write a play that perfectly articulates how I experience OCD in less than 60 minutes, and invite everyone I am interested in to come and watch it. If I could succeed in allowing the audience to truly see who I am, perhaps then I could bypass the emotional labor of discussing my OCD, and save a ton of time and energy by jumping straight into dating someone who fully sees and accepts me!
It turns out that writing a show about your mental health and performing it in an attempt to find love saves neither time nor energy. But, oh well — too late to back out now!
UnTethered is directed by Polina Ionina, and produced by her company, The How. Polina and I began working together in 2021 on a very intimate two-person movement theatre piece which was performed twice in NYC and once in Istanbul. After that experience, asking her to direct UnTethered was a no-brainer. I knew this piece needed an extremely talented, compassionate, visionary director who was hyper-attuned to the energetic life of the piece. I can’t imagine this play being directed by anyone else. On top of that, Polina is equally passionate about destigmatizing OCD diagnosis and presenting a piece that portrays an accurate and nuanced example of a disorder that is so often misunderstood.
What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?
We can’t wait to see Ellie Shaw’s Medium Dead! Ellie programmed UnTethered at The Glitch, and we’ve been following this show’s journey for a while now. (And of course, we have a deep respect for artists who wear many hats!)
We are looking forward to Centre of the Universe because Gaia’s marketing aesthetic is shockingly similar to UnTethered! (And because it sounds like a hilarious and moving piece.)
We’ve been following The City For Incurable Women by Fish in a Dress, and are super excited to see it.
And of course, the most anticipated show of Edinburgh Fringe is everything by Xhloe and Natasha! (And Then The Rodeo Burned Down, What If They Ate The Baby, and A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First). We’ve been following their careers for the past year and they are just absolutely smashing it! We are so impressed!
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