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Trish Lyons on suicide, stalking and survival in BUZZ

24 Jul 2025

We talked to Trish Lyons about her EdFringe show BUZZ, which chronicles tragic events in her life.

Art structures the way I see the world and ultimately saved my life.


Trish, your show BUZZ is described as a one-woman stand-up tragedy constructed around a stalking in Toronto, a suicide in London, a breakdown and time in a mental hospital. Can you tell us something about those events and how you bring them together?

BUZZ is about seeing and being seen. I was stalked in Toronto. I never saw my stalker. He would break into my home and take and leave things for me. It was a wholly frightening experience because even my home was not a safe space. I was acutely aware that he was watching me. He could see me but I could not see him. I wanted to become invisible – which I did, but it had consequences.

A few years later I witnessed a suicide in London. This experience was also about seeing, but this time as a witness. The trauma of the suicide triggered PTSD that had the uncanny psychological effect of making my body a vanishing point – a black hole that I was disappearing into.

These vivid experiences of seeing and being seen all spring from my understanding of the world as a visual artist. Art structures the way I see the world and ultimately saved my life.

What was your motivation for compiling the show?

It is our storytelling impulse that inspired BUZZ. Was it Joan Didion who said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to save our lives”? It is revealing that history and story are the same word in French – histoire. Stories are core to our sense of self, our origins and our histories.

When I witnessed a suicide, the experience profoundly affected me. It silenced me and I unravelled. When I found myself in a psychiatric hospital a few years later, I discovered the power of bearing witness and telling our stories. I heard stories of paranoia and suffering that I remember to this day. I grew more compassionate, and the experience expanded my ideas of what the mind is capable of.

So first and foremost, BUZZ is storytelling with surreal elements. I describe BUZZ as a cross between the storytelling podcast The Moth and performance art.

You worked as a lecturer in Fine Art and you are described as a post-punk frontwoman. Can you explain how those elements help to convey your message?

Both being a lecturer and a lead singer have prepared me for performing in front of an audience, which has readied me for the hardcore experience of live performance at the Fringe.

Being in a band is very rough and tumble – you play in dodgy venues and have to set up your own kit and know the equipment. It hones a whole set of improvisational skills.

When lecturing, I extemporise and discourse with the aid of notes. When I wrote BUZZ, I was meandering and weaving in abstract ideas, but in rehearsals these passages were deadening. I had to really strip back the text and get the action to move. My director, Lee Brock, would very diplomatically say, “That’s a really interesting section, but it doesn’t move things forward.” So out came the sword – and slash, slash, slash. (Hey, have you noticed that sword is an anagram of words?)

What would you like audiences to take away from the show?

I appreciate how difficult the subject of suicide is, but I also know that talking about it saves lives – so what I hope for is that BUZZ inspires conversations about suicide and PTSD.

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