Ever feel like the universe has it in for you? Award-winning storyteller Smita Russell knows the feeling. Fresh from winning the Grand Prize at the United Solo Festival in New York City, Russell brings her powerful one-woman show, Odds Are, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
In this darkly funny and deeply human performance, Russell explores love, loss, and myth, asking how we persist when life deals us an impossible hand. Inspired by her own experiences—including a Homeric journey, a series of rare late-term pregnancy losses, and a scientific diagnosis of “bad luck”—Odds Are examines how we try to explain the unexplainable.
After years of silence, Russell transformed her personal grief into a compelling narrative, discovering the healing power of storytelling. Her performance is raw and authentic, confronting taboos around womanhood and grief with nuance and vulnerability.
“There’s a moment, just after the final blackout, when something shifts in the room,” Russell shares. “Audiences linger—not just in their seats, but in their memories.” The show has sparked deep connections, with audience members often sharing their own stories in response.
Directed by Tony Award-winning producer Lee Seymour (The Inheritance, Who’s Your Baghdaddy), and supported by co-producer Shinzong Lee (NBC Universal, Paramount) and dramaturg Matthew Robert Gehring (Fringe favourite), Odds Are is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the transformative power of theatre.
