CQAF presents Seón Simpson’s on a Tangent.

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Ever re-read your teenage diary? Posted song lyrics as a cry for help? Had a secret poetry blog? Seón Simpson did – and she’s turned it into stand-up gold. There’s only one problem. She’s run out of material. That’s what happens when you use up all your love poems and all that’s left are poems about self-harm and suicide.

“Being a funny c**t is a trauma response,” Seón Simpson sagely suggests in this crowd-pleasing hybrid show. We expected no less. Few theatre-makers are navigating the intersection of form, comic provocation and mental health with her audacity.

An award-winning writer and director from who with Gina Donnelly makes up the boundary-pushing creative duo SkelpieLimmer, Simpson has steadily built a reputation with Two Fingers Up, the winner of a Lustrum award at Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Simpson’s touching, hilarious, deconstructed suicide monologue mines the rich seam of her teenage poetry blog – from DeviantArt, of course – for stand-up gold. Sample teen-poem line: “Chestnuts, his eyes.”

As a former unrepentantly horny and devout Church of Ireland adolescent, she has endless sexual misadventures and darkroom fumbles to explore. Bible camp, much like band camp in the American Pie movies, is compared to a swingers’ meet.

A liaison with the minister’s son results in explicit action in the back of the family’s seven-seater. A favoured Christian nightclub in Coleraine forbids alcohol, but you can easily acquire cocaine in the lavatories.

Seón Simpson’s on a Tangent, at Dublin Fringe, is a touching, audacious navigation of the intersection of form, comic provocation and mental health- The Irish Times

This event is 18+