ROCKETING rents in Edinburgh are forcing one Fringe performer to camp in a tent for the duration of the August festival.
Rents of £7000 for one bedroom in a shared flat for a month has made Narin Özenci shell out for a tent so she can bring her one-woman show to the city.
She told the Sunday National that she wasn’t going to let the high costs put her off staging her show, Inner Child(ish), as she felt too many working-class voices were being forced out of the Fringe because of the expense.
“I don’t know how anyone can justify £7000 for one room for a month,” said Özenci, who has autism.
“You hardly see any working-class people there now because of the costs. That has driven me to do it even more as I want to help represent the working class.”
Özenci first appeared at the Fringe in 2014, creating a stir by performing her show in her car.
“I could only squeeze in four or five people at a time but it got good feedback and Mark Watson came to interview me for BBC2’s Edinburgh Nights,” she said.
As she no longer owns a car, she will have to lug her tent to Edinburgh via public transport. And while she has camped before, she admitted that living in a tent for a month would be a challenge.
“I’ve never camped for as long as a month so it is going to be intense,” she joked.
“I probably will get a bit grumpy. Fortunately, I have a good sense of humour so I am trying to look at it as a funny adventure. And I might try to find someone strong and sexy to help me put up the tent.”
Born in Essex to a Turkish Cypriot family as a second-generation immigrant, Özenci was not screened for autism until she was at university where she also discovered the clowning group Ridiculusmus.
Inspired, she entered a TV writing competition and won a place in the Edinburgh International TV Festival 2003.
However, during a networking event, she was laughed at by a group of girls in the toilets for not wearing party clothes or make-up. After ranting about it to the comedian John Ryan, he advised her to try stand-up comedy. She took his advice and started gigging, integrating comedy into her degree and finally graduating from Aberystwyth University with a BA (Hons) in Performance with Film and TV.
In 2016, she received her first major acting and writing credit for Girls Go Trolling (Channel 4 Online) and made guest appearances in Hooligan Legacy (2016), Finding Fatimah (2017) and Man Like Mobeen (2018).
Özenci is making her welcome return to the Fringe this year with her new show which is a cross between stand-up and clowning.
“It’s a satire but it comes from a place of truth as the whole show is an allegory for an autistic meltdown,” she said. “I wanted to demonstrate what it is like to be in a meltdown and how I get out of it.
“I’m not actually having a meltdown – I am humourising it because that is the only way it does not have power over me. It’s also to educate neurotypical people as to how we process information and what we do when we are in a mess.”
In the show, Özenci’s alter ego, Narin Oz, is a misbehaving, rule-breaking, prank-loving being who enjoys nothing more than taking reality and flipping it on its head. She likes challenging the status quo, messing with social order and enjoying the chaos.
It’s a relaxed performance for the whole month as she wants neurodivergent people as well as neurotypicals to come along.
“I want people to be able to own who they are as a person because being neurodivergent is nothing to be ashamed of,” Özenci said.
As well as writing and performing in the show, she is in the process of developing clown workshops specifically for neurodivergent people to help them embrace their full, unmasked selves.
In her spare time, she is practising putting up her tent.
Narin Oz: Inner Child(ish) is on from July 31 until August 24 (not August 12) at the Just the Tonic Mash House.
