Posters advertising a queer artist’s show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe have been ripped down, with the vandalism believed to be motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry.

Sarah Alice Shull’s one-woman show Something To Believe In is playing at theSpace on the Mile and focuses on her experience at an all-girls Catholic school in Kentucky where she was “forced to reconcile her undeniable queerness with the religion that raised her”.

On Sunday (18 August), Shull shared video footage on Instagram which was filmed by the show’s director Erin Reynolds and captures three individuals removing one of the posters, before bending it in half and throwing it behind a wall.

The poster’s design, which Shull says the team “absolutely love” and “are very proud of”, was created by Liela Crosset, and features Jesus on the cross, wearing a schoolgirl’s uniform, with a rainbow badge on the blazer.

Shull told PinkNews that this is not the first time ads for the show had been damaged but previously the vandals responsible had been caught red-handed.

The damage “sucks”, Shull said, because, as for many other artists at the Fringe, she had to pay a lot of money to have posters printed. However, she’s thankful that it is “just a poster” and no one has been attacked.

“Unfortunately, there are still physical acts of violence being perpetrated against the LGBTQ+ community, especially people who don’t look like me – who aren’t white, who aren’t cis,” she said. “That would be… horrifying.

“At the end of the day, it’s a poster. It sucks, I wish it wasn’t happening but I’m glad it’s not something more violent. I’m glad it’s not something that is happening to people.”

The vandalism feels odd to Shull because she feels there are shows at the Fringe which this group of individuals might find more “inappropriate or problematic” than her own – not that she sees those shows or their posters as problematic.

“I think these folks, they have a problem, and it’s just funny to me because this poster is pretty tame and [my show is about] being queer, growing up in a Catholic school, in a Catholic community, and rejecting that. [It’s] ultimately a hopeful story.

“The show is called Something To Believe In because I’m asking that you believe in something. It doesn’t have to be organised religion – I suggest it isn’t organised religion – but I think they might like the show more than they realise if they actually came to see it.”

For Shull, the vandalism is part of a wider trend that is “concerning, not surprising, and falls in line with what’s happening in politics in the US and probably here in the UK as well”.

She continued: “I talk about it in the show. I talk about how the mixture, especially in the US, of religion and government is really dangerous. How again, you absolutely should believe in something whether it be religious or not, but it sucks because America has been so heavily influenced by Christianity and so heavily influenced by conservative Christianity.

“I don’t think we are aware sometimes, and that influence does spread to other parts of the globe because America has a tendency to do that, to spread to other people in that way.”

In the past, there was certainly more outward hatred towards “queer people, people of colour, people deemed different or marginalised by society” but nowadays, while we have “swung away from that”, it has meant “certain politicians in the United States feel they’re allowed to be louder than they were”, Shull went on to say.

“I don’t think that hate ever went away. It got a little better but now people are really loud about it and feel they have a licence to act this way – especially, towards trans people, towards drag artists.

“Maybe part of the problem with [the] poster is that Jesus is dressed in a schoolgirl uniform and they’re assuming things about that.”

Shull described her show as funny but “very well-balanced… a very personal story and one that I know a lot of people can relate to, especially being a woman or someone assigned female at birth, discovering a little later on that they’re queer, and how to navigate that and how to release the bonds of guilt and shame that religion place on you”.

A spokesperson for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society told PinkNews: “We are in communication with the artist affected and have informed Police Scotland. We are not able to provide further comment at this point.”

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