This review is based on watching an online video recording made on 18th August 2024 at Edinburgh Festival Fringe as I am sadly unable to attend in-person as planned this year.
Kate-Lois uses her own family history of cult membership to cultivate a confident, nuanced, and hilarious show, How to belong without joining a cult.
These days, Netflix tends to “other” the notion of cults by presenting them as “things that happen to other people” for our entertainment. But Kate-Lois has first-hand knowledge of how her parents and grandparents were drawn into an extremist religious cult, with her parents eventually finding the bravery to leave.
A world apart from the realities of daily life—or is it? Kate-Lois points out that cults are ‘groups gone bad' and asks: How have we got here? Why has the sinister desire to control the fear of uncertainty manifested in the Hen Do group chat?
What I love about this show is how relatable it makes our lives to such an extreme premise, and how Kate-Lois takes us on a cult co-creation journey where we are all complicit in treading the line between belonging and fitting in—which we all opt into.
Every single line has been crafted with purpose and delivered with aplomb. We collectively experience, along with our host, a push-pull between feeling like we belong, feeling like outsiders, and wanting to fit in with or stand out from the crowd.
Kate-Lois takes a genius approach to breaking down what self-reflection truly means and how to laugh in the face of coercion, rules, and fear. The show highlights the expanding concept of cults with a brilliant talent for normalising the absurd.
Show: Kate-Lois Elliott: How to belong without joining a cult Venue: Gilded Balloon Patter House – Bothie Time: 4pm (60 mins) Date: Until 26 August Ticket price: £12 (£11 concessions) Ticket link: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/kate-lois-elliott-how-to-belong-without-joining-a-cult
