This year, after working every summer since 1998, I finally managed to get the the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to see some work! I feel embarrased that it has been so long in the planning to get to Edinburgh!
My favourite two pieces were, firstly, the fantastically surreal work My Name Is Sue (Pleasance Two, right) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HFMpUG3M80 by Welsh collective Dafydd James and Ben Lewis , fused music, dramatic narrative and cross dressing. This wonderfully surreal cabaret/drama showed us that a happy exterior can reveal drug taking, family breakdown and a sinister and dark ending. Wonderful arrangements and compositions from this quartet of actor-musicians.
Paul McCleary - a good colleague of mine- was in King of the Gypsies (Pleasance) and took us on a hour long journey through the struggles of the gypsies over the generations. Fusing verbatim with dramatic intervention, the piece hopes to tour in 2009 and I hope to be able to bring it to Studio One on the Staffordshire University Campus.
Didn't get to see Orphans or Sea Wall unfortunately. Yet Orphans plays at Birmingham REP so I'll be heading to Brum soon!
On the way back from Edinburgh stopped off in Keswick at the Theatre by the Lake to take in the Studio production of Shelagh Stephenson's Memory of Water. One of the most emotionally memorable pieces of theatre I have experienced. Working in theatre sometimes you divorce yourself from the emotional through line of a piece when you are an audience member; yet this ensemble served the text with integrity and precision. See it while it lasts!
Back to Staffordshire now, where I'm preparing panto for Porthcawl; two documentary plays for touring and site specific for 2010 and Top Girls for Staffordshire University...
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