Dundee Fringe 2025
Words are the Knife: A show about love
Dai Lam Tait
Genre: Spoken Word
Venue: Sweet Venues
Festival: Dundee Fringe
Low Down
In the heart of Dundee Fringes, in an intimate room, Dai Lam Tait kneels serenely on velvet beside an altar decorated with natural objects and glowing with steady candlelight. They invite you to journey with them on a ritualistic exploration of love and relationship through spoken word, song, and dance. An emotionally intense journey delivered with humour and grace.
Review
Dai Lams aspect is calm and engaging as, kneeling on a velvet mat, next to an Altar they have erected and decorated they read a letter on love, deeply personal in nature, and rich with spiritual and physical emotion. The staging of this piece is striking, the performer kneels in front of the audience next to the altar, rather than behind or before it and in doing so creates a space that is intimate and feels almost sacrosanct. Their words are well formed, carefully chosen and ring with a raw authenticity. When the letter comes to an end there is a palpable tension in the audience. This is addressed with words of reassurance, and the relief is immediate, the audiences experience of the piece is acknowledged, and we are lead in a breathing exercise.
This moment initiates a sense of connection that permeates the experience from then on. As the ritual progresses it increasingly feels like we are the congregation of a spiritual leader, and this sense intensifies when Dai Lam leads us in a soulful song, they sing and the audience come in on the chorus. The show continues with another spoken word piece, each of these are different exploring love, relationship, personality, physicality, and philosophy. Their emotional and intellectual intensity is balanced by the ritual moments that follow them, and each intensifies the connection between the audience and the performance, between Dai Lam and their congregation. As the piece comes to its climax, the audience are invited to explore noise, any they can generate, and Dai Lam dances to hypnotically to the resulting wave of sound, bringing the ritual to an end in a physical and emotional crescendo that cleanses the emotions.
The way Dai Lam weaves thoughtful, intense, and sometimes graphic verbal content with ritual gives this work a sense of vulnerability and openness which lend it an enviable power. Moments like their explanation of the significance of altars in Vietnamese tradition lend weight and context to the performance and more of this type of contextualisation would empower the other aspects of the ritual.
The audience involvement was built well, there was the odd tense moment where it felt like we were in two minds and a little more directed instigation would help there, but for the most part we were brought along as companions on the journey rather than viewers and participation felt real, and unforced. Elements in delivery and composition, which on another night might give an unfinished air, for example looking through papers, or speaking with relief at having remembered all the words to the song, grounded the experience and added to its familiarity, the audience were treated as friends, confidants.
The writing is well realised and powerful, the ritual works well with much of its success deriving from the charismatic manner of Dai Lam themselves. The audience myself included left on a high with a strong sense of catharsis.
