Bitter Baby - student by day/sex worker by night - Fringe show tells true story
What does it take to juggle academic study by day and sex work by night? What does it take to forget your past? These are questions that Brazillian academic and autistic woman Elis Pear is grappling with. They are questions she is forced to ask herself as she comes to terms with the lengths she went to make ends meet whilst studying for her PHD in London in the early part of this decade.
This August, Elis brings her solo play to the Edinburgh Fringe. In Bitter Baby, which plays at Dirty Martini at Le Monde Hotel at 14.00hrs throughout August, she charts her personal experience of leading two lives in her attempt to navigate the pressure to succeed in a system not built for her.
Exploring what happens when academia, sex work, autism and identity collide, Bitter Baby takes the audience on an unfiltered, darkly funny and deeply human journey to expose the quiet truths behind shame and self-definition. Elis’s debut playis a darkly funny, emotionally raw work that speaks to anyone who’s ever had to split themselves into parts just in order to survive
Elis Pear says: “Bitter Baby is the show I never thought I’d write—but somehow always knew I needed to. It’s about shame, guilt, survival—and what happens when you finally dare to speak. I’m nervous, excited, and deeply proud to bring it to Edinburgh—because stories like this are so often lived, but rarely told out loud.”
Elis Pear is a Brazilian-born academic and emerging writer, now based in the UK. With a background in anthropology and neuroscience, her work blends scientific insight with the raw edges of her lived experience to explore themes of power, survival, and identity through spoken word and dark comedy.
Bitter Baby is her debut solo show and marks her first appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. New to the creative world, Elis brings a fresh and unconventional voice shaped by academia and a deep engagement with the realities of neurodivergents, immigrants, and sex workers.