BBC Radio 4’s Timandra Harkness is coming to this year’s Fringe with her show Take A Risk.
Timandra, writer, presenter and comedian is bringing a show about risk to Edinburgh. It’s about taking risks, being at risk and why we need to embrace uncertainty. Her show playfully highlights five categories of human risk – social, financial, physical, emotional and future health – she admits that taking her show to the Fringe exposes her to all five.
Risk is everywhere, from the moment you get up and risk death by falling out of bed, to that risky late-night text to the old flame. But so often we’re wrong about risk. Did you know that:
Flying to California is twice as risky as two hours inside Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Neil Armstrong estimated his chance of landing on the Moon as 50:50.
Four in five people killed by lightning are men. Since the UK population is 66 million, a ‘one in 3 million’ chance will happen to 22 people.
Choosing a show to watch on the Fringe is always risky, but this one is more risky than most. Motorcyclist and former trapeze artist Timandra Harkness has ridden bulls in Texas, flown the Channel on a microlight, and examined the science of choosing a urinal so she knows a thing or two about taking risks. Since her last Fringe, Timandra completed a BSc in Maths and Statistics, and joined the Royal Statistical Society, so she knows about calculated risks too.
Following on from previous hit shows Brainsex and Your Days Are Numbered: the maths of death, Take a Risk hopes to unleash your inner risk taker. Watch and learn about how mathematics and psychology can help you seize opportunities without embracing reckless danger. “I promise that the maths will be painless,” says Timandra, “but the electric shocks won’t.”
For Take a Risk, Timandra demands the audience make choices and take risky chances, that could change the course of the show. Every performance will be different.
In fact, there’s a 1 in 2,985,984 chance you’ll have to do the show yourselves. But that’s basically one in 3 million, so that’s never going to happen. Right?
Since running away to join the circus, and then running away from the circus, Timandra has written and performed comedy, first improvised, then stand up, and more recently with a leaning towards science, technology, and mathematics. She is the author of Big Data – Does Size Matter? (Bloomsbury, 2016).
Previous Fringe shows earned full houses and 4 star reviews. Your Days Are Numbered: the maths of death (with Matt Parker) went to the Melbourne Comedy Festival and the Adelaide Fringe. Brainsex (with Socrates the rat) toured the UK and Europe. On BBC Radio 4 she has presented series like How To Disagree and FutureProofing, which took her inside the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl and – twice as risky – on a plane to California.
Timandra is also was making a podcast linked to the show and first two episodes have gone live now: https://takeariskshow.podbean.com/
Venue: Assembly Roxy, Downstairs, 2 Roxburgh Place, EH8 9SU
Time: 11.15 am
Running Time: 50mins
Dates: 31 July – 25 August. Previews 1-3 August. No show Mon 12 or 19 August.
Tickets: Previews £7; 6 & 7, 10-11, 16-18, 22-15 & 29 August £8 (£7); 8-9, 13-14, 20-21 August £10 (£9)
Bookings: assemblyfestival.com, 0131 623 3030 or Assembly box offices at Assembly Hall and Assembly Roxy, Assembly George Square, Assembly Checkpoint and Assembly Rooms
Click HERE for more Fringe news and previews from Scottish Field
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