EDINBURGH 2026: ERIC LAMPAERT Q&A

BWW catches up with Eric Lampaert to chat about bringing Zero Minus One to the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Tell us a bit about Zero Minus One.

Zero Minus One is the result of seven years of reconstructing an identity from the void that followed my experience with amnesia. Losing all my memories was unforgettable, because in the space and time where “I” didn’t exist, I connected with something unbelievable, which completely transformed my relationship with reality and its inhabitants. Needless to say, it was both beautiful and traumatic, and making art was my only way of making sense of the inexplicable.

What are the challenges with telling such a personal story?

One of the main challenges in creating this particular story was the constant transformations I would experience; each tweak and edit, each change of perspective so that I can better understand the themes, would act as catalysts and rewrite my internal world as much as the one on the page, and this turbulence often meant I went round and round in circles as different version of myself, each voice wanting to have a say in what this story was really about, and how we were to share it. Trying to fit all that chaos in a one hour show was quite a challenge.

How have you structured the show to let the audience connect with what you experienced?

Amnesia is such an ethereal experience that most people can’t grasp what my world looks or feels like, in this space of nothingness, where I grieved not just the death of myself, but that of everyone I ever knew. It’s too alien for people to connect to, and that’s an advantage, it means they’re able to peek into a completely other world and be absorbed by this farfetched tale.

At its essence however, the story is about what it means to be human, so there are sprinklings of universal themes that everyone encounters in some degree; love, death, grief, time, consciousness, everyone traverses these topics, and this show provides answers, different perspective, some solace perhaps, to these giant inescapable human experiences.

Who would you like to come and see it?

Sixty people every day would be nice…. seeing as that’s the venue capacity. I’ve often thought about people that have experienced amnesia, Alzheimers, dementia, depression, psychosis, mania, and haven’t been able to grasp or communicate their transformative events, or their families and friends who seeloved one dissolve in these psychological labyrinths and suddenly lose the language to connect with them…

One of the reasons I want to share this story is to maybe provide some insight, maybe some hope or relief about the malleability of out intangible selves, and provide insight into what I saw “on the other side”…

What would you like audiences to take away from it?

Entertainment. At its most basic, I want to make sure audience members walk away satisfied they spent an excellent hour, with a somewhat unique story, in the hands of a trained clown. Anything else is out of my hands, we are all trapped in our subjective experiences, even if we speak the same language, we carry different dictionaries, words with wavering weights, one sold out room will likely walk away with sixty different interpretations and opinions.

What is in my control however is the performance, my presence on stage, so I’ll do my darnedest to share this story so that we spend an unforgettable hour together.

Eric Lampaert: Zero Minus One runs at Edfringe from 6-30 August

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