“How many of you have ever felt like a whore?” is a question audiences should be prepared to answer when they first sit down to watch the one-woman show Me and My Year of Casual Monasticism. After interviewing Emily Knutsson, the show’s writer, director, and sole performer, alongside producer Ewan Woods, I’m more inclined to ask, “How many of you have turned your final-year dissertation into a ‘sexy TED talk with a stand-up comedy edge’ that will be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe?”

It all started last academic year when Emily had to turn down someone hitting on her. “When you want to reject someone, you don’t just reject them. You tell them, ‘I’m going to live as a monk for a year,’” she explains matter-of-factly. But what may have started as an excuse soon became something more serious: “I knew that in order to really focus on my academic work at Cambridge, I needed to be single. So I cannot date in any way, shape, or form. And, yeah, people stopped hitting on me very quickly.” When a creative non-fiction module came up in her Creative Writing masters course, she experimented with telling this story via a fictional persona, ‘Mary’, which eventually developed into the novel she intends to submit for her dissertation. And, along the way, she wrote the play of Casual Monasticism which debuted in Pembroke New Cellars in November last year, before being picked up for the Edinburgh Fringe this August. As you may imagine, her supervisors are thrilled.

“How many of you have turned your final-year dissertation into a ‘sexy TED talk with a stand-up comedy edge’?”

To start the Fringe journey, Emily simply posted to her story: “anyone know about the Edinburgh Fringe?” and got a reply from Ewan, a third-year HSPS student with years of experience that included managing last year’s Footlights tour. He was drawn to what seemed “a good challenge to see how much I can do outside of the help of a big organisation like Footlights.” He had also been impressed seeing the show performed, even as he made mental notes on how he’d tweak technical aspects. Its upcoming Corpus Playroom run is therefore the show’s second, more ‘professional’ iteration, which will help them to prepare for the Fringe. Ewan’s coming on board as producer, an often under-recognised role, seems to have provided that valuable “second pair of eyes” that the original Varsity review recommended. Together with artistic producer Christina Huang, the team has lengthened the play by 10 minutes and adapted the lighting for the new Playroom venue to better fit Edinburgh. Since the original Pembroke run, Emily figured out which lines to cut, and which improvised moments to keep (including “a mean joke about my sister that just fits so well!”)

“Ewan […] seems to have provided that valuable ‘second pair of eyes’ that the original Varsity review recommended”

Nevertheless, the show’s themes remain constant. Mary attempts to process a series of traumatic events from her first weeks at Cambridge through academia-focused analogies. The play is structured around a text from the Middle Ages, which Emily finds to be “the most creative of all the eras – because there’s simply less information.” Acknowledging the unconventional mix of academic subject matter and stand-up comedy, Ewan notes that Emily’s “committing to crowd work is a cool choice – I don’t think I’ve seen anything with similar themes try such an approach.”

In fact, both history and Cambridge itself are key inspirations for Emily’s work. She is interested in “finding some sort of blend between contemporary and historical values” since “history is not a linear progression,” especially for women. She has also shot two short films, both set in Cambridge colleges in different historical eras. This is all under the banner of ‘Ready or Knut Productions’, the company she set up with a name intended to be “cheeky and a little inappropriate, which is basically everything I do.”

However, even through a comedic lens, the show aims to address serious topics such as the Madonna-whore complex and domestic abuse. Emily describes “lying on my floor face-down before the first show” due to the stress of exposing such personal parts of her life to her peers. “But there was such a sense of catharsis and satisfaction once I did that.”

So what’s next? The goal is to publish the novel, and ultimately develop the show into a television series. There’s also a projected sequel, Me and My Perfectly Respectable Hedonism which is about “standing up for yourself.” For those looking to create their own works, Emily advises, ”Casual Monasticism is about finding your identity and not being ashamed of it […] this show is essentially my personality taken to the degree of insanity. Be the most authentic version of yourself because that’s the version that people want to see.” Ewan’s advice for anyone looking to get into producing is: “Just have a crack at it. Edinburgh, especially, looks very daunting […] but it’s more feasible than people imagine.”

Fresh from a creative transformation, and readying itself for a whole new audience, this seems like a fantastic moment to catch Casual Monasticism while you can in Cambridge – right on the cusp of, as Mary would put it, the show’s own “personal Renaissance.”