The Cosmic Family continues to bewilder Edinburgh Fringe audiences and to expand the borders of sanity and reality. This Sunday at the last Spank! naked promo The Cosmic Family shat on stage to conclude their most sacred and powerful cleansing ritual.

Freddy Grifter, The Cosmic Family host says: “We all have our problems and we all know how straining the Fringe may be, especially if you’re trying to offer people something different, like we do. So, we decided to let go of all problems, and shit them all out.”

The Cosmic Family is a performance devised by the award-winning international collective The Solvents. They devise interdisciplinary and experimental events playing with a variety of forms: live acts, dance, theatre, live music, internet projects, video, and objects. In
their work they draw upon, and shamelessly mix Schiller and Shakesperian ways of working with approaches of Open Theatre, Butoh and contemporary dance, Post-modern collage and Fragmentation.

For the Fringe 2006 Festival, The Solvents
- perform The Cosmic Family workshop-seminar, a dark satire on new
age spirituality and corporate sell,
- walk-about with raining umbrellas pouring cleansing liquid on the heads of Edinburgh crowds,
- publish the alternative newspaper “FourGeeks” for Fringe misfits,
- appear in the naked Spank! promos,
- create the *Cosmic* pills available through the major Edinburgh drug dealers.

All this is part of the campaign to turn Fringe audience into Cosmic Family converts.

The Cosmic Family show, hailed “weird, terrifying” (Three Weeks), “shameless” (Scotsman) “hilarious” (Sunday Times), and “enlightening” (Four Geeks), is the most controversial show of the Festival, and can be seen every day at 2pm at Underbelly (entrances on Cowgate and Victoria st).

More information, high-resolution photos, press-pack, and videos are available on http://thesolvents.net/press

The Solvents are proud to announce that the first issue of FourGeeks was published for Edinburgh Fringe Festival. FourGeeks is the one and the only guide for Fringe misfits.
It is available at all major venues, and it’s free! Treat yourself with the latest reviews, news, and other stuff. You can download the PDF (Adobe Acrobat) version on our website now.

The Solvents also present the experimental and controversial piece The *Cosmic Family* at 2pm until 27 August in Underbelly - Belly Laugh. Book now!

The Cosmic Family spiritual group hijacks the Spank! comedy night at Underbelly and gets naked on stage to sing their hit Positive Energy song. Entranced followers also took their clothes off and people sang and laughed along in an explosion of positive energy. After the song, the Spank! hosts had to literally drag the frozen Cosmic Family members off the stage.

The Cosmic Family would do anything to attract more followers to its Positive Cult, and this action was a part of their Fringe campaign hailed “Eurotrash”, “Weird”, and “Truly Terrifying”. The Cosmic Family was also compared to “Mary Poppins on acid”: you might have seen them pilgriming through the streets of Edinburgh with umbrellas spreading spiritual rain.

You can join The Cosmic Family cult if you visit their workshop that takes place every day at 2pm in Underbelly, Belly Laugh.

Video (c) 2006 by Alex Smith

The Cosmic Family floods the streets of Edinburgh with spiritual rain. In their attempts to convert more Fringe goers into followers, The Cosmic Family members are walking around the city inviting passers-by to join them under the umbrellas, which pour the sacred liquids of She the Holy ™ on their heads.

The famous Edinburgh photographer Than compared the whole thing to “Mary Poppins on acid”, and the workshop itself was described as a “weird” and “truly terrifying” experience, “certainly not to everybody’s taste” (Three Weeks).
Of course! The Cosmic Family is only for those who are ready to take within their being She the Holy and to purchase The Universal Smoothie, which is still offered for £95 every day at 2pm in Underbelly Belly Laugh.

The spiritual group *Cosmic Family* received a warm welcoming in Italy, where they arrived on the day of world-cup celebrations. They were delighted to be cheered by a procession waving Italian flags. Most likely this had something to do with the fact that the *Cosmic Family* were on their way to bless the Pope in the Vatican.

Following the coverage of their life-changing seminar at OZU near Rome, in the Italian newspaper Messaggero, the *Cosmic Family* - in partnership with The Solvents (www.thesolvents.net)- has now managed to disguise itself as a theatre company and is heading to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It is definitely a lucky year for the Scotts as Fringe goers will finally have the unique chance to experience the powers of *SHE* The Holy.

Freddy Grifter, the spiritual leader of The *Cosmic Family*, said: “If the Pope is ready, then you should be ready too. Come and visit our workshop-seminar in Edinburgh and get your personal share of the positive energy that flowed throughout Italy. And don’t forget: our Universal Smoothie ™ (spiritually nourishing beverage) can only be bought inside our workshop for the bargain price of £95 only!”

The Solvents in Italian News Papers Messaggero, Il Manifesto and Republica.
The Italian newspapers wrote an article about the *Cosmic Family* show and Ula Dajerling’s installation at OZU this Saturday 22 July. The show was photographed by Roman photographer Andrea A. Mecci (photo of Freddy sharing the Universal Smoothie below)

The Solvents begin their residency in OZU (Officina Zone Umane), a converted Sweet Factory near Rome. Run by an association of artists from various backgrounds, of which Katharina Trabert from Pandora Pop (http://pandora-pop.de), and Enrico Blasi - famous Roman photographer (www.camerachiara.it), OZU aims to make cultural and artistic life happen in the area of the Sabina. The Solvents will be creating some new site specific work amongst piles of out of date sweets.

Katharina Trabert writes: ‘My God! Wim would love it!’

Full House for Cosmic Family at BAC, London.
And everybody got their Unique dose of The Universal Smoothie.

Slovakia was not ready: crude physical force had to used to milk *SHE* as the electric pump stopped!
Was it the Slovak translation that made only half of the audience join in the Positive Energy song? Did the vibrations of our perplex audience blow the fuses when SHE arrived?