Award-winning actor and playwright Ioana Goga brings her new one-woman-and-a-Furby dramedy to The Edinburgh Fringe this summer. A sharp take on millennial struggles, identity, and the pressure of adulthood.
“Celeste, a woman in her early 30s, has lost her job, her partner, and her creative momentum. Living in a flat she can no longer afford, far from her friends, the only thing she has left is Lulu—her trusty Furby and the last gift from her ex.
Together, they must piece Celeste’s life back together before it spirals out of control, with devastating consequences for the world around them.
Funny, punchy, and cathartic, Goodness Me delivers a message of mature hope. It will resonate with anyone who’s ever felt overwhelmed by the weight of the world.”
Where: Snug at Paradise in Augustines
When: 1-24 Aug
Ticket link: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/goodness-me
We caught up with Ioana for a chat.
Your show is about “one woman and a Furby”. Without spoiling too much, what can audiences expect?
If I achieve my aim, what people can expect is to feel seen and understood. There will be media projections, voice-overs, laughter, tears, and healthy amount of swearing, sprinkled with a bit of blasphemy.
The character in Goodness Me is a millennial grappling with adulthood. Personal experience or with anyone in mind?
It’s definitely a mix of both – I had the idea for this show floating around in my head for a few years, and I couldn’t figure out how to put it on paper until last year. I now believe it just wasn’t the right time for it before.
I was 29 and going through a big existential crisis about what my life looked like and where I was heading, the play is not autobiographical, but I wrote what I felt I needed to hear.
I wrote it as a love letter to anyone who has ever felt behind, lost, alone, who has ever cried in a bathroom stall on their lunch break, and then got on with their day.
How did you get your start in theatre? Do you find Fringe festivals inspiring?
I moved from Romania to London in 2014 to pursue acting training and a career in the industry. I did an acting foundation course at ArtsEd, then a BA in Acting for Stage and Media at the London College of Music.
For my dissertation I had to produce a show, I chose to write a play rather than do an adaptation, that was the first play I ever wrote, in 2018, Love (to) Bits.
With it I was nominated for the Best of the Fest award and won the B. Fest Brighton Fringe award the same year, as part of the International Youth Arts Festival (currently known as Fuse International Festival), which meant I got to participate in the Brighton Fringe for free the following year.
The day I got the phone call about that award remains one of the happiest in my life. It was incredible. That’s how I got my start in theatre and when I decided I had to attend the Edinburgh Fringe at least once in my life.
I absolutely love Fringe festivals and I think they can be a great platform for people to showcase their talent, present themselves to new audiences and make a name for themselves, but, unfortunately, they have become increasingly more inaccessible in terms of costs.
That’s why I see attending the Edinburgh Fringe as a bucket list experience for myself as an artist, but I am not sure how feasible it is to do it more than once.
We’ll see how it goes after my Edinburgh Fringe debut this year.
What are you looking forward to the most at Edinburgh?
There are two things I am very excited about:
1) Getting to perform my show every day for nearly a month. I love performing from the bottom of my heart and, as an emerging artist, sometimes it can be quite a long time between opportunities to perform a show for such a prolonged period of time. I love to see how a show grows and changes with every performance.
2) Being surrounded by a sea of like-minded creatives fully committed to their work, and watching as many shows as I possibly can from other artists, so I can discover new performers and ideas I maybe haven’t seen on stage before.
Where can we see your work after Fringe?
At the moment I know for sure I will be acting in The Bald Prima Donna by Eugène Ionesco from the 23rd to the 27th of September at Barons Court Theatre in London.
After that, I am aiming to transfer Goodness Me to a London venue and organise a UK or international tour for it, but all of that is very much in the planning and hoping stage.
The best way for people to keep up to date with my work is by following @joan_of_all_trades on Instagram, and @joan.of.all.trades on TikTok – I am yet to start posting on the latter, but I promise I will soon!
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