Theatre and Culture from Scotland, starring The List's Theatre Editor, his performance persona and occasional guest stars. Experimental writings, cod-academic critiques and all his opinions, stolen or original.
Today (Sunday 29 August)Myra’s Story,the 5-star sell-out show at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, was presented with thehighly-prizedBobby Award at the end of its final performance.
In front of a full-house in the Palais deVariétéspiegeltentin Assembly George Square Gardens, writer and director Brian Foster, award-winning actorFíonnaHewitt-Twamley, and Assembly Festival’s Artistic Director,William Burdett-Coutts,received their ‘Bobby’ - Broadway Baby’s top award for outstanding performance at this year’s Festival Fringe.
L/R Richard Beck, Brian Foster, FíonnaHewitt-Twamley, William Burdett-Coutts
TheBobby Award, fashionedafterthe iconic Greyfriars Bobby statue, is awarded to the best of the bestat the Fringe, those shows thatshine brightestamongst all the festival’s5-star shows. This year Broadway Baby have awarded just three Bobbys to 5-star shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Richard Beck Editor of Broadway Baby said:
“We are delighted to make this award to Myra’s Story this year. There is no single criterion that makes a show Bobby-worthy, it is a combination of things that have simply blown us away and Myra’s Story is an outstanding piece of theatre.”
Brian Foster, writer and director of Myra’s Story added:“Weare thrilled to receive this award. Myra’s story is a mix of hilarity andheartbreakand it has been amazing to be back on stage performing live tofull-housesat the festival this year. We have plans to tour Myra’s Story next year so we hope that as more venues open, more people will get the opportunity to see this fantastic show.”
Myra’s Story is about a middle-aged, homelessDublin streetdrinker played byFionnaHewitt-Twamleywho is funny, feisty, and foul-mouthed. She begs from passers-by for herdrink moneyand recreates her hilarious, harrowing, and ultimately heart-breaking backstory. A story that takes her from fresh faced teenage bride with a baby son and all to live for, to the tragic condition she finds herself in today. Audiences laugh and cry, often at the same time, as Myra sweeps them along on a real rollercoaster-of-emotions ride. Playing all the characters, acting out all the incredible events that have led her to alcoholism and destitution, hers is the face we habitually turn our head away from and pretend not to see. In the play, Myra never wallows in self-pity. Never cries. After so many often brutal years spent fighting just to exist on the streets of Dublin, Myra has no tears left to shed
Kill Me Nowis a digital, dramatic experience performed as a real life live Zoom webinar written by award winning playwright Rhiannon Boyle. This funny, heart wrenching one woman play, developed in lockdown specifically for a virtual audience, explores a new form taking live performance to a place we have never EVER been before. An innovative, hilarious yet poignant production which will be presented in collaboration with critically acclaimed Welsh new writing theatre company Dirty Protest.
And for the first predictable question: what was the inspiration for your show?
The story and the themes of the play lie very close to my heart as someone who lost my father after years of him suffering with the long term degenerative disease MS. I wanted to write a play about losing my Dad but because I have a very dark sense of humour, I wanted it to be funny.
My producers, Dirty Protest, and I spoke about the main character maybe giving a TED talk or being an expert in the one thing she has no idea how to deal with – her grief. That’s why I decided to make her an undertaker who is selling the franchise model of her business Joyful Endings Funerals, which is basically end-of-life celebrations that are more ‘fun’ than funeral.
How far does it fit within your usual work, and do you have a particular dramaturgical approach to creating a production?
I like dark comedy and so I suppose all my writing explores heavy themes in way that always find the light and humour. When I create I usually start by exploring the thing that I want to say. What’s the argument? What’s the issue? What’s the thing that’s made me angry or sad? I then do lots of work on the characters writing pages and pages on their past, personality traits, their hopes and fears.
When I’ve done all that I get to the story. My mantra is - spew then sculpt. I get it all out onto the page and then I’ll go back and look at how it fits into the Five Act Structure. Where is the inciting incident? Midpoint? Climax? What’s the character’s journey and how do they change? After all that it’s time to hand it over and get an outside opinion; a dramaturg or a director who I can really trust to help me develop it further.
Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
Not really. I write for TV, radio, theatre and now online. I like mixing it up and practicing different disciplines for different mediums and platforms.
What are you hoping that the audience will experience?
The play is a comedy set in covid times and will offer audiences some much needed fun and relief. The play deals with the themes of grief and so we will reach out and connect with audiences and communities experiencing grief at this time - whether that be grieving loved ones, grieving theatrical experiences or grieving our old lives. We are living in a time where we are all collectively grieving and connecting with others and making sense of it all whilst finding the light and humour can be a very powerful healing process.
How have you found the challenge of creating a production online? Has it been positive or negative and have there been any surprises?
It’s been brilliant fun. We tested the show out on a live audience and they absolutely loved it! I think because we’ve purposefully written this play for Zoom as a live Zoom webinar using all its interactive features it just really works. This is NOT online theatre. It’s a dramatic, digital, interactive experience and we can’t wait to share it with new audiences.
I have always asked about the role of theatre in public debate, but this now seems even more relevant. In the current landscape, what does theatre or performance have to give to the public sphere?
Hope. Connection. If we’ve learned anything during this pandemic it’s that everything around us – economies, services, industries and infrastructures – are so fragile. When everything ground to a halt and ceased, for me, it was connection to other human beings that kept me going. Love, compassion, kindness and trying to make sense of it all together.
At the Colorado premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, gun violence turned a celebration of cinema to tragedy. Devastated by one man’s actions, a community refused to be torn apart. This hard
hitting verbatim piece follows the survivors’ remarkable testimonies of the infamous Batman
Shootings, as they attempted to respond and recover from the tragedy.
Bold new company Piccolo Theatre - this year’s recipient of the Pleasance’s Charlie Hartill
Theatre Reserve - are striving to create cutting-edge and thought-provoking theatre. Exploring
the life-altering impact of a mass shooting, their first production Screen 9 reclaims the story of
the survivors to interrogate the debate around gun violence. It explores how such a horrific
event could take place at a beloved institution like a cinema and looks at our relationship with
watching movies. As we approach the ten year anniversary of the massacre, Piccolo Theatre
have spoken with those connected to the shootings and spent time spent in America, in order to gain a much greater understanding of American culture and the gun crisis.
Screen 9 brings to life four fictional characters based on real people and their very real
experiences: a parent; a survivor who is also a first responder; a woman who watched her
boyfriend die; and someone who simply came to a movie with life-altering consequences.
This is their story and every line comes from an actual survivor’s words, whether in testimony,
news accounts, social media or conversation. The production does not seek to glorify violence,
but instead focuses sensitively on a tragedy that could have been prevented and how the
individuals respond and create a community.
Writer and director Kate Barton comments:
In a time where so much press attention is on the politics, violence and devastation, this show is taking some time out to focus on the very real people affected the most by mass shootings in America. It’s a story of survival, community and hope in the wake of unimaginable tragedy in a place you would usually consider safe. This is an exciting debut for Piccolo and we can’t wait to share their stories with Edinburgh and the world.
And for the first predictable question: what was the inspiration for your show?
I went to the Cinema in Huddersfield the day the film opened in the UK, and I couldn’t believe that across the world something so awful had happened in a place I love. Aurora is a typical case where all of the media attention was on the shooter with their face being splashed across the TV. I knew I that there was something much more important that I wanted to share about the lives of the survivors and what happened after the media had left.
I think living through an event as tragic as this mass shooting is something that a lot of people around the world can’t comprehend. I certainly couldn’t! How could a space I love like the cinema suddenly be one of fear and death? But that is the reality for Americans right now and it is something I wanted to highlight. We as Europeans are getting so used to it happening across the Atlantic that a shooting which took place ONLY TWO WEEKS ago in a cinema in California, where people died, didn’t even make BBC homepage news… How far does it fit within your usual work, and do you have a particular dramaturgical approach to creating a production?
Well…. this is my first script so I’m still working out what my usual work will be …
I often say that I didn’t write this script – I researched and dramaturgically compiled it. It’s very much a collage of sorts. There is no one source I spoke to or took information from. Blogs, interviews, news coverage, documentaries – anything in the public domain or text from anyone who had spoken to me directly was taken as direct quotes and compiled together into four character sketches, anonymising details into amalgamated characters. It’s all made from their words and not mine.
Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
I would say this pieces falls within the verbatim and slightly immersive tradition. To be honest when I set about writing, devising and staging it, I thought of the script and staging as whatever would best suit the story and would generate as much empathy from the audience and truth from the situation as possible. When handling real stories and real words, you have to be so careful about how they come across, and so I wanted to present them with the care and respect they deserve. What are you hoping that the audience will experience?
Empathy and compassion for those who lived and continue to live through the effects of such a tragic event on their lives. As well as greater international understanding of the wider conversation around gun control in America.
What made you decide to come to the fringe this year?
We are the 2021 recipients of the Charlie Hartill Theatre Reserve and so are very fortunate to be supported by the Pleasance who have been instrumental in our development as an emerging company. Offering feedback, rehearsal space, advice and mentorship – we are so grateful for their continued encouragement and support.
This year also marks the 9th anniversary of the massacre, something we touch upon in the play. It feels important and right to look to tour it in 2022 with the view to share this story with a national and maybe even an international audience.
I have always asked about the role of theatre in public debate, but this now seems even more relevant. In the current landscape, what does theatre or performance have to give to the public sphere?
Ooooohhh – that is a great question. I think because theatre is inherently live, it is a place where you can communicate and engage with people in a really personal way – not through a screen. In the last year we’ve endured everything being forced to go digital. I think that has allowed further polarisation of opinion and a rise of the radical right. Live performance is an interesting way of capturing conversation. In our case, it’s a way of humanising individuals who you may disagree with - but through discussion, can move us all together to a more collaborative community and conversation.
Title Screen 9
Performance Dates Tuesday 10th – 29th August (not 16th, 23rd)
A hell of a lot can happen in the time you await the results of a pregnancy test. PUSH is the story of a woman staring down the barrel of motherhood, torn between her own ambivalence and an uncontrollable urge to push.
Award-winning Popelei have burst out of isolation and onto our screens with their darkly comic theatre production, reimagined for film after its preview at VAULT Festival 2020. Fusing theatre, movement and dance the company have embraced this new medium, collaborating with cinematographer Jack Offord. With blistering honesty, exhilarating choreography, and one extremely knocked-up performer this is an engaging, expressive performance...a show that captures the blizzard of feelings parents have for their as-yet-unborn children (The Guardian).
And for the first predictable question: what was the inspiration for your show?
PUSH kind of snuck up on us. Our 2019 show, 100 Years, explored maternal lineage across a century of history and two continents. We were in the rehearsal room, thinking about taking 100 Years further, when we found ourselves asking - what happens if we let go of this epic lens and instead look at a much more condensed moment of motherhood? So with PUSH we’re at the complete other end of the spectrum, exploring just three minutes in time as one woman awaits the results of her pregnancy test.
How far does it fit within your usual work, and do you have a particular dramaturgical approach to creating a production?
Our last three stage productions have all been one-person shows, so that’s a thread that runs through our work. There is something inherently good about the direct and playful relationship you can have between audience and performer in a one-person show. We’re open to different forms and have a very fluid, collaborative practice. We tend to design the process and the dramaturgical approach around the ideas behind each show and the people involved - rather than work to a strict structure.
PUSH is Popelei’s first film production. Our crew included film and theatre specialists,
which really helped with developing a way of working that honoured the energy and theatricality of the original production. As well as revisiting digital in the future, we are keen to build on the momentum of our 2020 Women in Lockdown project: a series of 25 original monologues curated from an open call for new work, supported by the Popelei Seed Commission.
Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
Tamsin trained at LeCoq in Paris, and European physical theatre is certainly an influence. Right now, we’re mostly excited to be part of the very current movement of female-led and feminist work in the UK.
What are you hoping that the audience will experience?
The same invigorating frenzy of feelings that you get from a live show.
How have you found the challenge of creating a production online? Has it been positive or negative and have there been any surprises?
Reimagining the stage show of PUSH as a film - that can be accessed digitally at Edfringe - has been hugely positive. It gave us an opportunity to build new collaborations with an insanely clever team of Bristol-based filmmakers, including cinematographer Jack Offord, and really dig into the risks and opportunities of a very different medium. We filmed PUSH in one long and continuous take, in a bid to capture the liveness of Tamsin Hurtado Clarke’s performance, and the energy needed from Tamsin and from every single member of the crew to complete this was a big challenge and a massive adrenaline rush.
I have always asked about the role of theatre in public debate, but this now seems even more relevant. In the current landscape, what does theatre or performance have to give to the public sphere?
During all this instability and upheaval, hopefully theatre remains one of the more solid spaces in which to connect with each other and, as importantly, ourselves.
PUSH was written in response to the difficulty faced as a woman in her 30s trying to separate your own life choices from the sense of a biological ticking clock, and the eternal question of whether to try to become a parent. It was created out of a desire to see the seemingly mundane moments of a woman’s life portrayed and explored on a grander scale. Here, the three-minute panic of waiting for the results of a pregnancy test transforms into a full-scale existential crisis, pulling in physical theatre and dance to express the broad range of complicated emotions.
Director Scarlett Plouviez comments, figuring out if, how and when to have a baby has never been easy. The last year has complicated this even further for many - dating in a time of social distancing, cancelled fertility appointments, money problems, moving back in with your parents, the climate crisis...the list goes on. PUSH doesn’t pretend to have an answer to any of this, but instead holds a mirror up to what it can feel like to experience a sliding-doors moment in your life, looking down at a pregnancy test and wondering what it is exactly that you want.
Popelei is an ongoing collaboration between writer-performer Tamsin Hurtado Clarke and writer-director Scarlett Plouviez, seeking to make performances that are authentic, energetic and hopeful, reflecting the world as they experience it and want it to be. PUSH features an original soundtrack by a regular Popelei collaborator, the renowned Chilean film and stage composer Santiago Jara Astaburuaga.
Title PUSH
Performance Dates Friday 6th – Monday 30th August 2021
Edinburgh Fringe On Demand - Friday 6th – Monday 30th August 2021
Ithaca is an autobiographical feminist one-woman adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey from writer
and performer Phoebe Angeni. Exploring contemporary social issues, Ithaca follows the journey of Nobody, a feminine aspect of Odysseus, as she re-defines her relationship with self and
home. Fantasy and reality merge in this new dynamic and darkly comic production about
Nobody’s journey to find home, while creating space and a voice for herself within a world and
body, which seem to forcefully reject her.
Ithaca is a stage-for-screen production where black box theatre meets experimental film. While the play draws heavily from Homer’s work, Angeni has taken its broad themes and used them to tell her own story, having always related to the obstacles Odysseus faces. By playing a female
version of Odysseus as well as embodying the invisible monsters, she is able to represent her
authentic experience and place the fuller figured female body in a position of heroism.
Through the lens of an unconventional heroine, Ithaca examines crucial social issues such as fat
these are all things Angeni has experienced herself having had to go to court to get a lifetime
restraining order for domestic harassment against her biological father, her experience of
immigration difficulties between the UK and US and her anxiety issues and depression no doubt exacerbated by her class at school forming the ‘I Hate Fat Phoebe’ club. Angeni has been able
to move through her traumas and aims for this work to be a positive portrayal of what is
possible when you overcome obstacles!
And for the first predictable question: what was the inspiration for your show?
Since I first picked it up at about age twelve, I’ve been inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. Thirteen or so years and a handful of translations later and I still resonate with Odysseus’ journey towards home and selfhood in the face of great challenges. I’ve always wanted to create a work based on TheOdyssey, and when the pandemic hit and lockdowns began I decided it was finally time to check this show off my bucket list!
How far does it fit within your usual work, and do you have a particular dramaturgical approach to creating a production?
Much of my work so far has involved Classical texts; however, this piece is a major departure in the fact that, as a poet, it is the first full play I’ve written. As a performer, it’s also a change and introspective challenge to be playing a character based on myself rather than one that someone else has written for me. In addition, this is the first play I’ve produced and directed; however, I have previously produced and directed short films, which very much came in handy given the fact that Ithaca is a digital piece.
In terms of my general approach to creating a production, I can be quite eclectic. I have sub-threshold ADHD, so my first step is always to create focus by setting out plot structure and detailed thoughts/aims for my work scene by scene. This initial outline allows me to jump around within the show as I research and new ideas come to me. I then piece the project together, re-arranging my thoughts like puzzle pieces until they take their final shape.
For Ithaca, I broke down Homer’s epic into its main events and themes, picked out the chapters central to Odysseus, transposed my life story into the place of Odysseus’, and then ran with it. I wanted to create a show that brings Classical Epic into the contemporary age. Ithaca is a piece that experiments with theatrical format and conventions, that raises awareness for social issues, and that anyone can watch and resonate with – whether or not they have read TheOdyssey.
Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
I’d say the best way to describe my work is experimental. I’m inspired by Classical texts, mythology, and physical theatre. I love to link history with the modern-day and I enjoy emphasising the body as geography within which I can explore current socio-political issues.
Poetry and experimental film also both inform the style in which I present my work, as I focus heavily on how my text sounds, how the lines of dialogue bounce with one another, and how I can create a visually evocative experience. I’m also especially inspired by surrealism and other artistic genres that seek to explore the subconscious and lines between fantasy and reality.
What are you hoping that the audience will experience?
Ithaca takes place in a very intimate space and features techniques and effects designed to be absorptive, so I’m hoping that the audience feels as if they’re in the room with me as I perform the show.
I hope the experience will be inspiring and thought-provoking both in terms of the style of the show and the social issues featured within the plot. If audience members resonate with the journey of my central character, Nobody, I hope that they will feel her strength and that they will leave the show with a sense of catharsis, empowerment, and hope.
How have you found the challenge of creating a production online? Has it been positive or negative and have there been any surprises?
Creating a digital show has definitely been a challenge, but it has also given me the amazing opportunity to expand my knowledge of pre and post-production. Since the pandemic, I found myself as a one-woman operation both on and off-stage and the format of creating a digital piece allowed me to not only write and perform Ithaca, but also to direct, film, and edit the show.
Having my hand in every element of production allowed me to shape the show into a distilled expression of my creative vision. The most difficult aspect of production was operating in a sixteen square foot room with fairly limited technology and only myself as both performer and camera operator. The challenges and restrictions I faced throughout production, however, also pushed me to think outside of my expectations and create a piece that ultimately took on a life of its own!
I have always asked about the role of theatre in public debate, but this now seems even more relevant. In the current landscape, what does theatre or performance have to give to the public sphere?
I believe in theatre’s gift of perspective and empathetic connection. In a world both recovering from and still amidst a pandemic, connection is something that we all deeply crave and throughout this past couple of years connection has increasingly come from digital platforms.
Theatre has always given its audiences something great to be a part of – a community, a story, a space. Digital theatre will not replace live shows, but it democratises performance, both connecting artists across the globe and ensuring that communities with accessibility requirements aren’t left behind as traditional spaces re-open.
At its best, theatre is by and for the people and should reflect our truth, bring us together, and advocate for a better future. Theatre is for socio-political examination, to reflect the light and shadow of society, and theatre is also for experimentation – to show the world its potential.
Title Ithaca
Performance Dates Friday 6th – Monday 30th August 2021
Available on demand
Running Time 60 minutes
Box Office Tickets are available from www.edfringe.com priced £9 (£5)
