The Idiot’s Guide to Breaking Your Own Heart at Thistle Theatre at Greenside @ Riddles Court

Fit in, look perfect, get straight As, go to the right parties, fulfill your parents’ dreams – today’s teenagers are under immense pressure.

If they are not “living their best lives” every minute of the day they have failed.

A new US pop rock musical, based on interviews with young Americans, and performed by teenage students from St John’s Country Day School, Jacksonville, Florida, addresses all these issues when it premieres at this year’s Fringe.

Presented by Infinity Repertory Theatre Company (which has a proud record of bringing accessible and issues-based young people’s performance to Edinburgh) The Idiot’s Guide to Breaking Your Own Heart explores the pressures facing contemporary youth.

Simon Walker has a school assignment – to write a manual on "How to be You", to demonstrate whether you are a product of nature or nurture. The final part of the project is to answer two questions:

· What do you contribute to society?

· Does your life have meaning?

Questioning his existence, ability to love and be loved, and his weird school lunch, Simon struggles to understand his place in the world.

Simon worries that he is a misfit, has no skills and no clear ambition. 

Is his life a complete failure? Together with his friends, Quentin Bean and Sandy Dachowski, Simon relives the high and low points of his life. 

Join Simon in a show that’s funny and gut-wrenching.