2011 Edinburgh Fringe

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Emily Watson Howes - The Umbrella Birds, The Ladies (BBC Radio 4) - returns to Edinburgh with her debut solo show Seminar, a comedy on the edge of sanity, part satire of the stress management industry and part serenade to pointlessness.

If you feel you're losing control as time runs inexorably towards your death, or that you're drowning in the essential meaninglessness of existence, great because Kimberley Jane Feldhauser's (Emily Watson Howes) Seminar has all the answers. All of them.

Stress is proven to lead to marriage failure, flatulence, job loss, dizzy spells, infertility, gastric ulcer, hair loss, redundancy, teeth grinding, heartbreak, premature ejaculation and death. It's absolutely critical you all relax as soon as possible. Start living in the present, count to ten, listen to some whale noises, and for the love of God find some inner contentment. Yes, it takes work. Yes, it takes focus. Yes, sometimes you'll wish you were dead. But no one ever said, 'Gee. I wasted too much of my life achieving serenity'.

With a table full of stress beating products, a power point clicker and a powerful sense of failure, acclaimed stress expert Kimberley leads you on a slow meltdown in her much anticipated new seminar 'How to Smash Stress and Find Inner Bliss'.

Emily Watson Howes is the founder and sole writer of The Umbrella Birds, the all female sketch group behind sell out Edinburgh shows; WC, Gym and Sketches in a Shop Changing Room and the writer of both BBC Radio 4 hit series The Ladies. Emily is also the Artistic Director of triple award-nominated storytelling company You Need Me, who are resident at the Corn Exchange, Newbury, for whom she has directed How It Ended, Certain Dark Things and Death Song. All of which have toured nationally and featured in BBC Radio 4's The Nearside and Tim Minchin's Rocking On for BBC Radio 2. In September she will direct Coasting by Natalie McGrath for the Bristol Old Vic.