Gabriela Flarys, a London-based Brazilian actress, dancer, and writer, brings her one-woman show Deluge to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
This captivating piece of magical realism explores the stages of mourning and the process of dealing with grief through a blend of theatre, comedy, physicality, and original music. Directed by Andrea Maciel, Deluge promises to be a unique theatrical experience that delves into the intensely personal and universal aspects of loss.
Deluge is set in the surreal world of a leaky house where the protagonist tries to contain the overflow of her thoughts. As the water rises, the show uses humor to address dark topics, ultimately showing how facing negative emotions can lead to personal growth. Deluge runs from August 1st to 26th (excluding the 12th and 19th) at Summerhall, with performances at 18:15. Tickets are available now.
You’re bringing Deluge to Summerhall. What can you tell us about the show?
It is a magical realistic ‘dramedy’ that follows a woman navigating a flood-threatened home in the aftermath of a breakup. She brings up real-life stories of other people to make sense of her own experience. The show combines movement with text, comedy, drama, live music and projections. It explores diverse responses to loss beyond human death by encompassing grief to the loss of pets, belongings, organs and relationships.
Deluge explores the different stages of mourning with a magic realist twist. Can you share more about how you incorporate magical realism into the narrative and what inspired this choice?
The idea for this show emerged during the pandemic when I was intensively thinking about everything that could have happened if it wasn’t for lockdown. I could physically sense my thoughts as liquid flowing through the house. One day I heard myself saying to a friend, “If I could count all my thoughts in litres, I could flood a house.” I stopped for a moment and said: “Ah! This is my next show”.
This is my second one-woman show in collaboration with Andrea Maciel (director and co-dramaturg) which is set against a backdrop of fictional magical realism. It is wonderful working with Andrea, we enjoy exploring endless metaphorical possibilities. I love that magical realism mixes fiction and realism allowing me to connect to both realms, subverting conventional order by incorporating fantastical elements into real narratives. This genre allows for metaphors that resonate with everyday life while opening space for new perspectives.
In Deluge, the magical realism is the set backdrop revealing the inner world of this character. Through poetic imagery, it lays bare the emotional roller coaster she is going through. The character comprehends reality through a magical realistic perspective, which influences the way she interacts with the objects in her home and the world around her.
The show is described as a ‘dramedy’ that fuses theatre, comedy, physicality, text, clowning, original music, and projection. How do these diverse elements come together to enhance the storytelling?
This fusion helps capture the non-linear experience of grief, as it can be a roller coaster full of highs and lows. Some people say: “it comes in waves.” These different mediums add different rhythms and moments to the show. It transitions between comedic and heartfelt scenes, through a dynamic physicality, and suspended moments of live piano alongside video projections.
You mentioned that Deluge was inspired by your own experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic and the responses from a social media call out. Can you talk about how these personal and collective experiences shaped the development of the show?
During lockdown, we had an inevitable constant – sometimes overwhelming- collective sense of grief. I had the urge to listen to other people’s stories to gain a deeper understanding of it. During that process, I realised I hadn’t given myself space to grieve certain things in my life, recognising some overlooked losses.
Like in my previous show, “There She Is,” interviewing people was an insightful process for the development of ideas. Bringing these stories into the rehearsal studio, Andrea Maciel and I began experimenting. From hundreds of improvisations, we picked ideas and physical movements. We selected the text and scenes, gradually shaping the dramaturgy together. We finally wrote it down and refined it into a concise script. In regards to the interviews about grief that I conducted with people, while only a few are directly presented on stage, each one contributed to a rich process of shaping the emotional landscape of the show. Deluge had multiple versions shared with audiences. The project was granted an Arts Council England to R&D in 2023. We conducted Q&As and gathered audience feedback in London venues: Blue Elephant Theatre, Omnibus Theatre, and Jacksons Lane. This process allowed us to adjust and improve for the current version of the show.
As a performer with a background in dance, theatre, and writing, how do you draw on your multidisciplinary skills to bring the character and story of Deluge to life on stage?
As a theatre-maker, my creative process for developing the dramaturgy and character is dynamic and experimental. Andrea and I engaged in many different improvisation sessions devising all the possible scenarios to explore and find the best fit for this story. Our improvisations blended spoken text with physicality. Sometimes we prioritised the text over the movement, and at other times, it went the other way around. In this piece, movement is always integrated with the text – the text informs the movement as much as the movement informs the text – adding layers of meaning. There are moments of pure choreography, others of only storytelling and many where spoken-text plays along with movements.
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see Deluge?
If you like to laugh at what you think you could cry about, cry because you laughed, or maybe just ponder on the very human condition and reality that is the end of things by watching a lot of physicality with live music on stage… Come to see Deluge!
