Bellina Logan answers our questions ahead of Confessions of a Mulatto Love Child heading to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Confessions of a Mulatto Love Child makes its international debut at Fringe. Based on her own extraordinary childhood, the show traces growing up biracial in predominantly white environments throughout the 1960s and 70s and a life spent moving between continents under the care of an eccentric, larger-than-life mother whose memory is now beginning to fade. We chat to writer and performer Bellina Logan about family, remembering you life and the personal meaning to performing at Fringe.

The show is deeply personal. At what point did you decide what could just be family stories could actually become a one-person show?

I'd been telling these stories for years - at dinner parties, in classrooms, sitting with friends - never thinking they were anything more than the kinds of family stories we all share to connect, fill the silence and entertain each other. I'd notice people reacting, but I never imagined they belonged on a stage. That changed when my director, Maggie Soboil, listened to me tell several different stories and said, "You've just told me four different stories that all make up one bigger story. You should stand on stage and tell them." I remember thinking, "Who cares?" Maggie simply smiled and said, "You won't know until you get up there and try." So I did. Some stories failed miserably, others soared - and that's how the play began.

Your mother seems to be a remarkable presence throughout the piece. Was there a particular story or memory that became the anchor for the whole show?

In a way, it wasn't one story- it was one sentence. Every night when my mother tucked me into bed she'd tell me stories from her own life, and almost every one ended the same way: "Remember your life." Those three words became the heartbeat of our relationship and, ultimately, the heartbeat of the play. There is one particular story near the end of the show that people always ask me to tell again, and it captures my mother's spirit perfectly. I won't give it away because it's much more fun to experience in the theatre, but if audiences leave remembering her, then I've done my job.

Averil’s instruction to “give me your little hand” appears to capture an entire way of living. Why did that phrase stay with you?

Because she said it all the time - literally from the time I was five until I was forty-five. She said it until she couldn't say it anymore. "Give me your little hand" was her beckoning call. It was how she invited me into an adventure, comforted me when I was depressed, ended an argument so we could begin again, or simply when she wanted to take me shopping at Bloomingdale's. Those five little words came to mean, "Come with me." I don't think I realized how much those five little words had shaped my life until I sat down to write the play.

The show recreates a huge cast of characters from your childhood, from neighbours and shop clerks to nannies and family friends. How did you decide who made it into the final version?

It was incredibly hard because there were so many wonderful people who didn't make it into the play. That's where having a director like Maggie Soboil was invaluable. Every time I'd bring her another story she'd say, "Great story, my love... but does it tell THIS story?" Sometimes it did, but then we'd have to decide which story served that part of the journey better. If it didn't serve the larger arc, it had to go, no matter how much I loved it. Friends and family still come to the show afterwards and ask, "Wait... where was I?" or "What happened to that story?" I usually have to tap dance around that one - but eventually they understand.

There is an interesting reversal in the show, where the person who taught you to notice and remember everything begins to lose her own memories. How did that change the way you thought about your shared history?

There's something profoundly unsettling about two people sharing a lifetime of memories and then suddenly only one of you can say, "That happened." You were both witnesses to the same life, and then one day you're carrying it alone. It made me realize how precious those shared memories really are.

You have been performing Confessions Of A Mulatto Love Child around the United States since 2017. Has the show changed significantly over the years as you have continued living with the material?

The play itself really hasn't changed much. The structure, the lines and the arc are still the ones I wrote back in 2017. There might be the occasional "and" or "but," or a tiny nuance here and there that I’ve shifted around, but it's essentially the same piece.

What's changed is me. I've lived more life, and so has my audience. Friends sometimes come back and say, "It feels different this time," and I always tell them, "The play hasn't changed -you have." I think that's the magic of theatre. The same words somehow keep revealing something new because we keep changing.

This is the show's international debut, what made Edinburgh feel like the right place to bring it next?

As a theatre actor, I'd heard about the Edinburgh Fringe for as long as I can remember. It was one of those places my friends and I talked about with reverence - maybe you'd be in a show that got to go there. As I got older, I realized, "Well... you can also take yourself." It isn't easy, but I mean... if not now, when?

It's also personal. My mother's family is English, and her grandparents came from Scotland. She always wanted to take me there, but we never made it. So bringing this play to Edinburgh feels like finishing one more adventure we never got to have together. I can totally hear her saying, "Well, it took you long enough, darling!"

Confessions of a Mulatto Love Child will be performed at 10:10am at Zoo Southside from 7th – 30th August. Booking link: https://zoofestival.co.uk/programme/confessions-of-a-mulatto-love-child/