Australian Performance Artist Betty Grumble on Turning Trauma into Performance at the Edinburgh Fringe

Betty Grumble doesn’t just perform - she transforms. In her genre-defying show Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh!t, the Australian performance artist channels rage, grief, pleasure and protest through ritual, humour and radical bodily autonomy. Drawing from her own lived experience of patriarchal and intimate partner violence, Grumble (aka Emma Maye Gibson) turns personal trauma into collective release, guided by laughter, erotic energy, and what she calls “glamour spells.” In this interview, she reflects on healing, the sacredness of clowning, and how community, creativity and ancestral mischief can help us fight back with unbearable compassion.

Can you talk about the real-life experiences that inspired Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh!t and how you transformed them into a live performance?

Creating the friend/critter/alter ego Betty Grumble helped me move my rage around. She came out of me like a war mask, and through time, softened into love letters. I have experienced the violence of patriarchy first hand in my body. Not just once, but multiple times. This work follows my pursuit of justice for domestic violence through the court system. This pursuit rippled the web of experience through my body and my practice as a storyteller has actively helped me process this. This show shares that methodology on stage - the dancing - the poetry - the glamour spells and the power of friendship and solidarity with both the living and dead. 

How do you use humour and absurdity to explore themes like trauma, justice, and bodily autonomy?

I come from a lineage of laughing ones. I uphold the figure of the clown goddess/goddexx as real holy. What I hope to do with this work is share the potent balm of humour in the face of pain. This is a meditation practice for me. I want to go beyond revenge fantasy whilst still honouring the need to acknowledge grief of violence, and take action.Laughter oxygenates heavy stories, with respect - to go beyond polarity of victim and abuser and to be able to fight with unbearable compassion in the heart. When things feel impossible - resonating joy - remembering legacies of rascaldom helps me breathe. 

This show emerges in the aftermath of patriarchal and intimate partner violence — what do you hope women who have experienced similar situations take from this?

I hope people experience a sense of recognition, of solidarity and release. Court rooms and the media can fail us. Enemies of Grooviness is a place to rest in. In belief, in care and in the wisdom of all those who have come before us and created space for us to meet this way. 

How do you navigate the vulnerability of performing such raw, personal material live on stage?

I know who my people are. To confide in, to refuel with, to hold me accountable. I go and bathe in other art. Let water hold me. Trust it’s coming through. Be fallible. Cum hard. 

You’ve performed around the world in spaces ranging from MoMA to Glastonbury. What do you hope to take from The Edinburgh Fringe?

By returning to Edinburgh Fringe I want to share this story, the energy it carries and my role as a representative of a particularly potent community of queer storytellers that hail from Gadigal Country. Parts of my blood ancestry live in Scotland. For those seeking belonging, travelling this way is a process of remembering and I always feel a rush of home when in this place. To meet the physical belonging as well as a cultural belonging in Ed Fringe is a divine thing. I hope to receive its magick, and share it wherever I go. 

If you could offer one message to those who are surviving or healing from systemic or personal violence, what would it be?

There is a healing that can only happen in the privacy of your own heart. Looking out at this time, the world and the reckoning with power that we are all doing brings heaviness. As the goddess Elizabeth Burton, legendary Buddhist Stripper and one of the knowledge holders in our show would say ‘...be kind to you…’  Sometimes I put my hand on my heart and pat it, I stroke myself, I breathe out. I find time to be with my grief as it connects to all grief and I try to be kind. I say ‘Thank You Body’ and in that mantra my body wants to connect to all bodies. Sometimes I can’t do this, and that's okay too. I can try again. 

Betty Grumble: Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh!t will be at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August.

For tickets and more information, visit: https://assemblyfestival.com/whats-on/1054-betty-grumbles-enemies-of-grooviness-eat-sht