FRINGE 2019: Good at Cults an insane story with an Edmonton connection
Good at Cults
Stage 27 (The Buckingham)
This is about a different kind of history – how in our personal histories we can learn the wrong ways to relate to others, and how we can get ourselves into trouble later in life when we aren’t even aware of it.
It also left a real head-scratcher of a question at the end of this way too short performance: Why is this the first time I’ve heard this story?
Playwright and performer Cait Elliott tells the tale of a young woman in New York City with a traumatic upbringing, a desire to please, and porous interpersonal boundaries. She meets a chap from Edmonton (yes, confirmed after the performance to be true!) whom she soon discovers quietly runs a cult, with God knows how many other women as followers. The guy uses some really creepy, invasive, immoral, occult-based hocus-pocus convince her that giving him blow jobs will open the door for her towards the bliss of spiritual nirvana.
How is this not a book on the L.A. Times best-seller list?
It’s jaw-dropping to hear Elliott tell this completely insane story and then bring it all home in a much more literal way than you might imagine.
Elliott doesn’t preen or expect to be understood, and her openness in sharing what she got involved in – and out of – becomes an invitation for empathy. Telling this story took enormous courage, and the ability she has developed to view such a horribly destructive experience through a humourous lens shows she has already come a long way on her healing journey.
This is the exact reason why stories like this need to be told – not just to help people like her and keep them moving along the healing path, but to help teach compassion in the face of another’s very real suffering. Brutally, unflinchingly honest, healthily self effacing, shocking, outrageous and compassion-inducing, this play runs the gamut – and is a must see at this year’s Fringe.
5 out of 5
