Is it too late for me to Blog about Edinburgh?


It is the first Saturday in weeks where I have had "a weekend". I have come back from the shops. I did my washing. I uploaded some photos to IPhoto...and that's when I saw my as-yet unblogged Edinburgh journey. So I hope I'm not too late to share some of my Edinburgh highlights!

The first show I saw was on the same day we arrived and marked a fantastic start to the festival. Tim Price had a new short play, For Once, performed as part of a script-in-hand reading of 5 plays called "Pigs", produced by Pentabus. Tim's play was fantastic. For me, it captured perfectly the experience of being young in a rural area, where there is nothing to do except wish you had a McDonalds; I had never heard anything that spoke of that experience. I so often hear about urban youth and it was thrilling to see part of my experience of growing up being represented on stage.

After that was My Name is Sue, which as John already reported went on to win a Total Theatre Award. It was both funny and beautiful; wonderfully performed and created by Dafydd James. Definitely one of the best shows I saw (I ended up seeing it twice and singing bits of the songs for the next few days).

Other Welsh highlights included the up and coming comedian, Lloyd Langford, with a hilarious "big feet" joke. I'm not going to try and reproduce it; you had to be there! Also, one of my favourites year in-year out: Hugh Hughes, this time with a lovely show called 360 about changing your perspective on the world and your life. I loved his previous shows, Floating and Story of a Rabbit; this performance contained many of the key things I love about Hugh, but this time with paired back stage elements and in his own words, no friends.

We were also able to attend performances we were told about by members of this social network, most enjoyable of all were Exeter University Footlight's production of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, featuring members of this community and Stopped Clock's Lucky Dip.

Volcano's I-Witness was a beautifully dirty investigation into the work of WG Sebald, particularly "The Rings of Saturn". It was a road trip for the senses, where words and images clashed and accumulated in an exciting physical examination of a book (I won't tell you what happens because it's on tour in November! Go and see it at Chapter, Cardiff on 20-21 November).

Power Plant was 'a sound and light experience' in the Royal Botanic Garden at night, with installations by Wales-based installation artist Mark Anderson amongst others. Find out more about Mark's work by clicking on this link to his Mid-Wales based company, DarkSpark. The installations transformed the world of the gardens as glasshouses became spaces for play and exploration; my favoutite was Mark's "Siren Song", where a large 2nd World War air raid siren is accompanied by 20 other smaller sirens creating a mysterious harmonic choir. Together they sing a haunting lament that fills the majestic Palm House. It was beautiful, sad and evoked lots of thoughts about war and conflict.

Here's some images from Power Plant:







Other highlights from Edinburgh included The Year of the Horse, a wonderful one-man show exploring the last years of the life of cartoonist Harry Horse through projected images of his last cartoons for the Sunday Herald, with Horse's own accompanying text spoken by performer Tam Dean Burn.


Love Letters Straight From Your Heart by Uninvited Guests was a beautifully touching and evocative exploration of different loves, where audience members were asked make a song dedication, which was then read out as the song was played. We had bubbly cava and some of us were compelled to chase Richard Dufty of Uninvited Guests around the room in a love-chase that proved just how exhausting - and exhilarating - love can be.

Iris Brunette, by Melanie Wilson, invited 16 audience members at a time to explore Iris' world, destroyed by war or apocalypse, through light, sound and shadow. Oh My Green Soap Box, by Improbable's Lucy Foster, encouraged us all to think of the polar bear as she examined climate change and our role in it. Must: The Inside Story was a journey written and performed by the legendary New York artist, Peggy Shaw. It was a journey through her life and through her body, told against the backdrop of an old wood-paneled anatomy lecture theatre with a live orchestra. Cartoon de Salvo's improvisation-led Hard Hearted Hannah and Other Stories was an extraordinary process to watch unfolding in front of you, as the team made up a brand new story based on audience suggestions of title and 3 popular songs. Our performance was called "The Man Who Flew Too Much" and Elvis' "Suspicious Minds" was one song chosen; it was brave, committed comedy.

My favourite venue was definitely the Forest Fringe, a bijou performance space offering free shows and works-in-progress from some very exciting young artists and companies. It seems to be reclaiming the fringe, enshewing the corporate sponsored images of many more polished, established venues to provide performance opportunities for artists who may otherwise not have the means to be experimental on the fringe.

My two Forest Fringe highlights were firstly, Ant Hampton's 'Autoteatro' piece GuruGuru, where I, along with 4 other participants, were locked in a room with a 6th onscreen character. We were part of a self-help group for theatre types who couldn't help ourselves and had to rely on the screen to examine our inner most selves. We were fed our "lines" through headphones and eventually revolted against our guru!

Class of '76 was a presentation by Third Angel, which told us about performer Alexander Kelly's search to track down all his fellow pupils from his primary school class of 1976 and to tell the story of what they are each doing now. It made me think about all of our lives - both accumulatively and through stages - and how we have friends at each of these stages and how we lose people by the wayside.

Overall, a fantastic fringe experience in Edinburgh - most exciting by far was the overwhelming talent and passion exhibited by so many Welsh and Wales-based performers and creatives. Thank you everyone for a wonderful year.

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