Interview: Louise Irwin, 21 Common

Ahead of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024, we’re chatting with a range of creatives who will be heading to the city over August to find out more about their shows. Today we’re chatting with 21 Common’s Executive Producer Louise Irwin to chat about Common Is As Common Does.

Can you tell us a bit about you and your career so far?

21Common are a Glasgow-based dance collective who blend iconoclastic references, pop culture and preoccupation with risk and danger to create spectacular dance experiences. Our previous work has consistently challenged the notion of who can be a dancer and has placed those that are under-represented in that role. We make work for on stage and off and have toured all over the world. 

What is your show about?

Common Is As Common Does: A Memoir is a dance spectacular mashing karaoke carnage and feats of physical endurance with chucking out time at the Grand Ole Oprey. Using tropes of Western movies, it explores how poverty and violence shape a man.

What was the inspiration for Common is as Common Does: A Memoir and what’s the development process been to get to this stage?

This show was originally a co-commission with OneRen and Future Paisley/Renfrewshire Council. We made the work in 2022/23 across Paisley, Linwood and Johnstone. The work took as its starting point the impact and lack of agency poverty affords young men and how exposure to violence shapes ideas of masculinity. Based on actual lived experience, it asks uncomfortable questions about how we normalise violence in this age of rage and outrage.

What made you want to take Common is as Common Does: A Memoir to the Fringe?

It’s how we get our work seen! This is the fourth show 21Common have presented in the Made in Scotland Showcase at the Edinburgh Fringe. In 2022 we brought In The Interests of Health and Safety Can Patrons Please Supervise Their Children At All Times; in 2018 we had The Ballad of the Apathetic Son and His Narcissistic Mother and in 2016 we presented Dancer.

Apart from seeing Common is as Common Does: A Memoir, what’s your top tip for anybody heading for Edinburgh this summer?

The Show for Young Men by GuestHouse Projects at Dance Base and Charlene Boyd’s June Carter Cash: The Woman, her Music and Me at Summerhall.

Why should people book Common is as Common Does: A Memoir?

Book it if you want to experience deep joy, significant unease, fear, anxiety, malevolence, hilarity and the desire to dance. 

When and where can people see Common is as Common Does: A Memoir?

Zoo Southside (Main House)