Today we let Olivia Ormond take the reigns and talk about how experiences with chronic pain and being dismissed by the medical system lead to a show at the Fringe.

I lived something extremely specific that no one talks about, and I had to find the one vehicle that could hold it. That vehicle was The Fringe. The Fringe invites you to put it all on the line, to become your art. There are no rules at The Fringe, which is why it’s the hardest puzzle to crack.

There was no writing around this story. There was only one option: to write straight through it.

As a screenwriter, I kept trying to hand the pain of being dismissed, misdiagnosed, and gaslit by the medical system to my characters, but they never felt what I felt. Not fully. They couldn’t get inside my head the way I could. They were never as isolated as I was, because characters need someone to talk to. I kept trying to give the story away, to let someone else carry it. Hoping that if I could create people who understood me, maybe it would prove that I wasn’t alone.

“It’s the bravest kind of storytelling. Every flaw, every silence, every contradiction is you, yourself, and I…”

But it never hit the right note. Not in a script. Not in a scene. Not until I threw out all the structures I knew and wrote it exactly as it happened. Not an adaptation but my actual life. Which somehow feels like both a creative cop-out and the scariest thing I’ve ever done.

There’s a laziness people often associate with one-person shows. The ego of self writes itself and you’re just along for the ride. But on the other side of that coin; you have nothing to hide behind. It’s the bravest kind of storytelling. Every flaw, every silence, every contradiction is you, yourself, and I.

The story I’ve been trying to write has always been, at its core, about finding my voice and then using it. Loudly. Relentlessly. Until people listen. That last part is conveniently left out of the advice we love to give young creatives. “Find your voice,” we say. Rarely do we add, “And then use it for as long as it takes for people to hear you.”

That’s how this play came to be.

“The Fringe invites you to put it all on the line, to become your art...”

Like I said, The Fringe has no rules, but rules are an artist’s best friend. They give us form and direction. Between the lines is where the fun happens. But I tried writing between the lines, and this story never took shape. Not like I knew it could. Not until The Fringe took the lines away. That’s when it came alive. I was no longer fitting monologues into conversations and asking the screen to talk back. I stopped trying to make the story make sense. I asked the audience to sit with it, judge it, and stay anyway.

I am no longer a reliable narrator. I don’t need to be. I just need to tell the truth.

Fringe shows are unconventional, and that’s exactly what makes them more powerful than standard storytelling. No matter how hard I tried to tell this story in other forms, it didn’t land until I let go of structure, gave up on characters who weren’t me, and told the truth. Call Me Crazy only works because it’s an unconventional story forced to live in a conventional world. The Fringe breaks that world open. It’s the secret ingredient that makes the story’s voice undeniable. It’s not just a venue, it’s the only place where this kind of raw honesty isn’t just allowed, it’s expected. 

Come along to see ‘Call Me Crazy’ at Clover Studio at Greenside @ Riddles Court (Venue 16) – at 1.45pm between the 1st-9th August

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