Saskia Solomons on Fool's Gold @ ZOO Playground, Ed Fringe

Saskia Solomons is a physical clown, storyteller and ‘social explorer’. Striving for radical honesty and genuine connection with an audience, they created Fool’s Gold as a way to playfully hold up the mirror – to ask all of those icky tricky questions – first to themselves and then to us. What do we do with privilege? Who gets to have a voice? (Should I even be up here telling this tale?) Does our responsibility lie with our own kids, or with society as a whole? Summoning the spirit of the bouffon, they hope to lovingly provoke a conversation about how we, collectively, tackle the inequality snowball. Theatre Bubble caught up with Saskia before their preview show at Open Source Arts in Leeds. Photography by Coralie Datta.

Can you sum up the show in five words?

Provocative. Funny. Physical. Interactive. Bold.

What has been a highlight of yours in the rehearsal room?

Having several hundred ping pong balls in the room makes for some highly silly (and messy!) break times – we’ve invented a lot of ridiculous games along the way. But I suppose the biggest highlight has been the journey itself really, though I realise that sounds a little trite. Making this show has been a deep dive, both personally and artistically – I’ve learned so much and want to keep learning..

Tell us about the form – what made bouffon/clown such a good medium for the show?

All the ‘characters’ that have made their way into the show came from an improvisational process I’ve been developing, that has its soul in clown and draws on a psychotherapeutic model called Internal Family Systems (IFS) and ‘fooling’, where multiple inner personalities or ‘parts’ are embodied one after the other. It’s an incredibly freeing and playful process that throws up a lot of fantastic surprises, though it’s not always easy. Meanwhile, the gold bouffon body creates both a visual metaphor for the theme and provided a ‘mask’ which allowed me to transpose these inner beings for the stage – to take them out of the realm of personal exploration and into connection with an audience. The result is a sort of hybrid clown/bouffon/fooling show that I hope will carry the spirit of the traditional Fool – throughout history, the ‘Fool’ has been the figure who lovingly calls our attention to the uncomfortable unnamed truths of society through provocative play, laughter, ritual and mischief.

What would you like the audience to take away from Fool’s Gold?

I would love audiences to come away feeling, thinking and talking about their relationship to money, inequality and the economic systems we live in. I never wanted the show to be about pointing fingers or blaming individuals, there is enough of that in the world already, but I do want people to consider their role in the bigger picture, to feel into what positive change might look like and to recognise what part they may have to play in that. In essence, I hope to inspire people to look inside, have the courage to have have challenging conversations with themselves and others and hopefully (!) take steps to be part of a movement towards a fairer society..

Do you feel like the ideas explored through the show are spoken about enough in real life?

No. That’s why I made the show. In my experience, we Brits don’t talk about money; it’s a taboo topic that’s wrapped up in centuries of toxic classism. Instead we just silently assess each other based on what we wear, how we speak, where we live, our education, job, house, car. Even the drink we have in our hand. Inequality perpetuates this ‘us and them’ mentality – it’s incredibly divisive. Therefore, for many people, talking about money feels unsafe – whether you feel you have too little or too much, so the silence continues and inequality snowballs out of control. I wanted to challenge the silence – my own and others – so we can have a different conversation about how we tackle inequality, rather than treating it as the uncomfortable and unchangeable norm.

What’s coming up next for you after the Edinburgh Fringe?

Who knows?! I would absolutely love to tour the show, both in the UK and to English-speaking international festivals – spiralling inequality certainly isn’t a solely British issue! With a general election on the horizon in the UK though, I’m passionate about being part of the movement for change in government policies regarding wealth and inequality. I think the show has the capacity to open up tricky conversations in a really fun, playful and honest way, so I’ve been talking to the Rural Touring Network, as well as regional and London theatres in the hope that Fool’s Gold can live on beyond the Edinburgh Fringe. Who knows, perhaps I’ll be getting people talking about money all the way to the polls!

Saskia Solomons’ Fool’s Gold performs from 04-27 August (not 16), 16:30, ZOO Playground. Boxoffice: www.zoofestival.co.uk