Abuse often comes shrouded in code. It comes in signs. Physical marks and distress, eyes that won’t meet yours, garbled speech, a sort of radical shrinking. There’s the less obvious, mental iterations. Rapid and sudden introversion, anxiety, depression: another sort of radical diminishing.

How is Uncle John? is the show that deals with these codes. It’s a duologue dealing with sex as power and economic capital. It’s a show dealing with sex trafficking. Even more particularly it’s a show dealing with a mother and daughter attempting to discuss- allusively, brokenly- the shattering effects of its aftermath and trying to piece together something approaching a new start.

“Uncle John” is a code and a sign. It’s a safe-phrase, used so Hope (the daughter) can alert her mother to danger. Even with all of its generic masculinity, it is an incantation that can’t banish away male violence. Anxiety permeates the whole tone and mood. There’s a mother's evident and obvious anxiety. There’s the anxiety of the vulnerable, exploited Hope. And there’s the pressing anxiety that no simple safe code can expel a world of violence meted out to the vulnerable. It’s a dramatic microcosm of the ‘real’ world, one in which the use of sex, force and power rule, and the shattered lives of the weak stand as testimony. (FG)

How Is Uncle John? played at Assembly Hall - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/how-is-uncle-john

Modern Slavery in the UK- http://www.unseenuk.org/

Understanding the Language of Narcissistic Abuse- http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/10/understanding-the-language-of-narcissistic-abuse/

Threatened Child (Extract)- https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8VIg9STL-wUC&oi=fnd&pg=PP11&dq=the+rhetoric+of+abuse&ots=KFwjjP6uwF&sig=k76qR5vNR9QzvZj6KEb6j90ytcc#v=onepage&q=the%20rhetoric%20of%20abuse&f=false

Trafficking Survivor Stories- http://www.equalitynow.org/campaigns/trafficking-survivor-stories

It’s an irony as old as time. Women may be seen as fit subjects for every conceivable violence, but they are not suitable for fight in war. From recent conflicts in Iraq, Afganistan and elsewhere, women's roles in the armed forces seem to extend little past the 2D. Physical, mental, societal violence is fit and fair game. But for a woman to fight in times of conflict has, until very recently, been seen as a frightening or morally disgusting transgression.

Dropped may deal with a fictional Middle Eastern conflict with Australian personnel (the show originally ran at the Adelaide Fringe earlier in 2016 and was awarded the prize for Best Local Theatre Production), but it’s topical concern to British audiences is amplified by July’s lifting of the ban on women serving in close combat roles in the British Army. The performance poses the question to the audience: what effect does the violence of war have on women?

The answer, if there is one reducible answer, is that there is a difference, if only because of the warped saint-like expectations visited on women: those of holy mother, or kindly protector. They may experience the same traumas, deprivations and horrors as the male soldier in times of war, but the concern visited from outside isn’t to do with them as soldiers, but as mothers or uprooted occupiers of the domestic space.

We are led as an audience to believe that Sarah Cullinan and Natalia Sledz’ characters have witnessed the harm of a child, though it remains shrouded in mystery whether this a just an effect of PTSD related trauma. The effects of David McVicar’s direction leaves it purposefully ambiguous and offers no ready made, trite conclusions as to the effects of violence.

- FG

Dropped played at the Pleasance Courtyard - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/dropped

British Army’s Women Soldiers to Go Into Combat- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/12060225/British-Armys-women-soldiers-to-go-into-combat.html

On Motherhood and Violence- http://makhzin.org/issues/feminisms/on-motherhood-and-violence

Women, Trauma and PTSD- http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treatment/women/women-trauma-ptsd.asp

Gender based violence and the global hypocricy that fuels it- http://www.humanosphere.org/opinion/2016/06/gender-based-violence-misogyny-and-a-global-hypocrisy-that-fuels-it/

Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War- http://www.unicef.org/sowc96pk/sexviol.htm