Deborah Unger, the writer and performer of The Longer My Mother is Dead The More I Like Her, is bringing her play to the Edinburgh Fringe this August. With a title like this, I wanted to find out more.

When and where are you performing at the Fringe this year?  

I am performing in The Olive, Greenside at George Street.  I’ll be there for the entire Fringe run (very exciting) from August 7 through 28, and my show plays at 12.30 pm.  It’s a great location to see my show, then have a lovely lunch.
What was the inspiration for your show?  

I always had a contentious relationship with my mother.  And even though I moved away from home at 18 (for college, and then life), she continued to live in my head – as a critical voice that told me what I was doing wrong.  A few years after my Dad died (and before she passed away), I decided that in order to NOT have to continue living with that voice in my head, I would have to make peace with her.  The process started then and continued for years after she left the planet.  Writing the show was a big part of that process.  Along the way, I was able to forgive not only her but myself as well.

Have you performed at any other fringe festivals before embarking on Edinburgh?  While I haven’t specifically been in any other Fringes, I have performed the show off-off-Broadway (self-produced) for a limited run as well as appearing in 3 solo show festivals, all to great reviews.  Great preparation for the Edinburgh experience!

How did you first get into the Theatre industry?  

I think my first “performance” was in kindergarden – and I remember being annoyed at the little boy who held my hand in the dance circle because he was a thumb-sucker and that meant his hand was wet.  Yuck.  I remember thinking, “How unprofessional?”  At 5!  As an Army brat, we were constantly moving.  I found that telling stories of the other places I had lived was a great ice-breaker when meeting and making new friends.  This occurred every 2-3 years.  So naturally,  telling stories in front of larger audiences was the next step.  I made the decision to be an actor – as a career — when I was 16.  I’ve been at it ever since.

Have you been given any advice or help from performers or creatives who have previously been to the Edinburgh Fringe? 

YES! It would be crazy not to make use of that resource!  A lot of the advice centres around self-care and how to promote my show.  Those will be my other two full-time jobs, along with performing.  In addition, I got recommendations about setting a routine before performances and how to avoid the Edinburgh Flu!

Who is your target audience? When I started writing and subsequently performing the show, I thought it would be audiences who wanted to talk/think about/explore       their relationships with their moms.  As it turns out, the show is a great conduit  for thinking about and examining ANY relationship of consequence.  It opens a dialogue by giving folks a reference point (“You know that part in the show where she said THAT about her mom?”) from which to talk about some issue that perhaps they had been unable to pinpoint before, or were embarrassed to discuss directly.  And I’ve been told it makes audience members think about and remember their own relationships – and the possibility of either holding them differently or even changing them for the better.  It’s quite humbling for a girl who really just likes to make people laugh a lot and even cry a little.  That’s the true joy of theatre: a moment in time, sharing an experience, and having it affect a person’s everyday life.

https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/the-longer-my-mother-is-dead-the-more-i-like-her