Critically-acclaimed performance artist and award-winning comedian Ben Target’s hit show LORENZO has won a prestigious Fringe First award. Produced by Soho Theatre and directed by Adam Brace (Age is a Feeling; Liz Kingsman: One Woman Show; Alex Edelman: Just for Us), LORENZO is a life-affirming story about death, following Target’s experience as the live-in carer for his uncle.
The Scotsman’s globally renowned Fringe First awards have been recognising outstanding new writing premiered at Edinburgh Festival Fringe since 1973.
Susan Mansfield in The Scotsman says, The issue of care for the elderly, who does it and at what cost, is one of the most pressing of our age, and erstwhile stand-up comic Ben Target tackles it in microcosm in this bittersweet one-man show… this is a moving and courageous piece of theatre. Poignantly, it was directed by Adam Brace, who died suddenly in April while the show was being made.
Target has a long-term interest in care, particularly palliative and elderly care, but he doesn’t have an axe to grind here. In this personal story he has found a way to confront the messiness of ageing and dying, lightening the load with humour and by creating a portrait of the extraordinary man that was Lorenzo Wong.
Lorenzo, an architect, lived and worked in London for over forty years. A set of extraordinary circumstances led to Ben (Leicester Mercury Comedian Of The Year; Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee; Amused Moose Best Show Comedy Award winner) becoming his live-in carer at the end of his life: discover their adventures.
Ben has a history of working in care, from being a teacher of secondary school students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities to volunteering at the Highgate Mental Health Centre, where he taught stand-up comedy to residents of the schizophrenia care wards during the COVID-19 lockdowns. He has worked in elderly care over many years, from volunteering as a teenager to co-founding the social arts initiative The Care Home Tour in 2017, taking stand-up shows into care homes for the elderly to perform to people living with dementia.
As a former Inclusivity Designer, Ben was shortlisted for an RCA award for systems engineering a proposed euthanasia service for the NHS palliative care units. In exploring the best way in which to care when life nears death, LORENZO touches upon the right to die concept and proposes that sometimes the ultimate act of care would be to allow the voluntary ending of life, facilitating this responsibly and painlessly.
The show will transfer to Soho Theatre for a two-week run, from 27th September 2023.
