Performance, Protest and Pleasure: Inside Betty Grumble’s Most Personal Work Yet

Australian artist and “eco-sexual showgirl” Betty Grumble is back at the Edinburgh Fringe with Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh!t - an explosive, embodied protest against patriarchal violence, courtroom misogyny, and emotional silencing. Fusing ritual, cabaret, autobiography and raw performance art, the show is a riotous reclamation of power and a tribute to healing in public. Here, Grumble (aka Emma Maye Gibson) opens up about turning personal pain into collective ritual, the influence of radical feminists and queer elders, and why audiences should be prepared to meet her “in the compost.”

Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh!t is a provocative and powerful title - what does it represent for you?

It makes me laugh and connects me to rascals. It reminds me of aunties howling down people who have trespassed you. Not to do real harm, but to acknowledge the pain you have felt, to sever the energetic ties of violation and to empower you to heal. It’s a big up. It also is a declaration of accountability, for I too must Eat Shit - so as not to pass on the pain that I've received. It is a mantra for renewal. 

The work is based on a real life court case. Can you tell us about that, and the impact it had?

The work handles a web of patriarchal violence and uses the experience of navigating a court system to seek justice for a domestic violence experience. The impact of the court room was how we might understand it to both fail and buoy us. A colonial system based on punitive justice that does not always give space for real healing and in my case, allowed a defence attorney to spit out some of the most cliche misogynist claims to attempt to paint me as hysterical and somehow deserving of violence. It’s an old story, it's with us in our culture, it lives in our bodies and it is possible to go beyond it. I want this for everyone. 

Your work blends ritual, cabaret, performance art, and activism. How do you approach creating a piece that is both deeply personal and politically charged?

With reverence, care and in consultation with experts. This work is alive and moving each time we perform it. We ask ourselves who we are now in the work and what it is to perform it today. This work wants to speak truth to power with love energy, it is a flesh riotous attempt to reweave stories and forge new relationships under the guidance of friends and mentors both living and dead. 

What role does the audience play in this particular work, and how do you invite them into the experience?

The audience are both witnesses and collaborators in this work. They choose how much they open to it and the invitation into the work has been developed over years of relational practice. We meet together in the compost. It is an alchemical relationship. A breathing force. 

How have your feminist and ecosexual influences, like Annie Sprinkle and Diamanda Galás, shaped this new work?

My mentors and friends are present in the show. We call them in to share their wisdom and to help govern the membrane of safety needed to travel this way. These icons have shaped the work with their unapologetic reminders to share from the heart, to create with rigour and to take risks. To work with Dr Annie Sprinkle has given me so much confidence in what is possible in the realms of the erotic. I am fortunate to be blessed this way. Legends like Diamanda Galas, Peaches, Christeene, Candy Royalle, Elizabeth Burton, Smith and Adrienne Truscott have deeply influenced me. I feel friendship in the cultural undulations of storytellers that remind us to become experts in aliveness, and then share that. 

What do you hope that audiences at Edinburgh Fringe take away from the show?

A sense of recognition, a resonation of joy, space in the chest and a desire to keep our hearts open. 

Betty Grumble: Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh!t will be performed at 9.15pm every night in August at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

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