Emily Weitzman returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer with Furniture Boys, a show that transforms relationships into something both absurd and unexpectedly profound. Blending spoken word, comedy, and theatre, the piece reimagines ex-partners as household objects, inviting audiences into a world that is as playful as it is revealing.
“I think of myself as a writer, performer, educator, poet, dancer, artist, very multi‑interdisciplinary,” Emily begins. “I was really a writer for the page for a long time, but I really missed that feeling of being in a space with the audience and having that immediate reaction and sense of being present in the room all together.” It was during a period of isolation, while teaching writing at Columbia University, that the idea for Furniture Boys began to take shape. “I had this idea to start writing it and it sort of built and built and grew on itself and has become what it is today.”
The origins of the show stretch back even further, to an early creative instinct to reframe personal experience. “I kept writing about ex-boyfriends as if they were furniture,” Emily explains. “When I was 18 years old, I had this spoken word poem about a pull-out couch, it was much more fun and joyful to write this poem to a couch.” That recurring motif became impossible to ignore. “Furniture just had such a presence in a lot of my work, that gave me the idea, okay, there’s something more.”
At its heart, Furniture Boys is built on this peculiar and compelling metaphor. “All my ex-boyfriends are armchairs, lampshades, futons,” Emily says. “It starts out in this absurdist world, but then the show goes on to investigate that question: why are the boys furniture?” What begins as a comic premise evolves into something more reflective. “Ultimately, it says something about the impermanence of a relationship, an artistic project, a person, a chair, a self.”
Assigning each relationship its own piece of furniture proved to be one of the show’s most enjoyable creative processes. “That was the fun part,” Emily admits. “A sort of boring ex-boyfriend is an office chair. My high school boyfriend, my very first boyfriend, is the couch, which is the centrepiece of the whole show.” The shifting nature of memory also plays its role. “Certainly, different boys switched pieces of furniture along the way, it was just fun to think about.”
Despite its humour, performing such personal material can feel daunting. “I always feel nervous right before I get on the stage, but when I’m on the stage, it just feels right,” Emily says. “That’s because of the audience, I feel like I’m alone, but the audience is there with me.” The show’s structure helps alleviate that sense of exposure. “There’s something about Furniture Boys, it’s a blend of theatre, comedy, clown, spoken word, there’s videography, photography, archival material, a dance number. All these different modes make me feel like there are many layers of me there on the stage.”
That multidisciplinary approach reflects Emily’s varied creative background. “Picking one would feel like having to pick one Furniture Boy,” they say of their artistic influences. “It feels like it’s the way that all of them come together that makes Furniture Boys unique.”
Having debuted the show at the Fringe last year, Emily is eager to return. “I loved it. That’s why I’m coming back,” they say. “We had sold out shows… an amazing four star review in The Guardian… and it went better than I ever imagined.” Beyond the success, it was the atmosphere that stayed with them. “It was like theatre kid summer camp, you just feel so alive being at the Fringe.”
Audience response also brought some unexpected reassurance. “There was the question of, will my humour translate to UK audiences?” Emily recalls. “And that surprised me that it did.” Performing almost every day, however, proved less daunting than anticipated. “I thought it would be harder to do 25 shows in 26 days, but it was exhilarating. Every audience was different, so it felt new every day.”
Now returning to Underbelly in a larger venue, Emily is ready to share the show with even more audiences. “I would say all my ex-boyfriends are furniture. Why are the boys furniture? Come to the show to find out,” they say, laughing. “Furniture and boys, they have many more similarities than you might think. The show is funny, it’s joyful, it’s full of deeper meaning, and the stage is full of amazing furniture.”
With its blend of humour and introspection, Furniture Boys promises to be a standout Fringe experience, one that invites audiences to reconsider not only their relationships, but the objects they hold onto.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
