Drama instigates debate and changes lives. With venues open again, this is a chance to build a truly civic theatre culture Theatre may not seem like a natural place to go in order to underst…
A performative preview: the members of Barrel Organ explore debt, friendship and grief ahead of their Edinburgh Fringe show. The post Anyone’s Guess How We Got Here appeared first on E…
(This post is part of the 2014 TCG National Conference: Crossing Borders {Survive | Thrive} blog salon, curated by Caridad Svich.) Financial models supporting the creation …
Repertory theatre is back in fashion. With the Secret Theatre ensemble working through a number of shows at the Lyric and the Royal Court producing its own six-play season last year, it seem…
"You're a very good leader and you're very good at listening to others". Ellie Stamp has just met me, but she tells me this 'fact' based purely on the numbers of my birthday. It sounds lovel…
Phrases which Little Soldier uses to describe its work emphasises a crossover between humour and drama: "Life imitates art in the most tragic way" (Pakita); "Funny yet touching" (You and …
"They can be quite unnerving," Mark Ravenhill says of the Secret Theatre company, suggesting that their 12Â months of working together has given way to a kind of openness he hasn't come ac…
Five years on from its première, Void Story is still during the rounds and continues to delight audiences. It’s a strange but beautiful mix of live graphic novel, post-apocalyptic nov…
In the past, the shows of pop deconstructionists Frisky and Mannish have mixed styles and genres in order to demonstrate the basic history and rules of popular music, and have even considere…
Theatre Ad Infinitum is a company which constantly reinvents itself; two years ago, Translunar Paradise told a heartbreaking story of two people in love using masks and music, whilst 2013…
Magic cards on the table: I 100%Â do not believe in psychics or fortune-tellers. Being a rationalist, I refuse to believe that the human mind has any ability whatsoever to reach out to ano…
Were you to make a list of acts who may play music festivals, the Royal Shakespeare Company would not necessarily be a name which featured highly. You'd probably be right in thinking that, m…
To say Grounded took last year's Edinburgh Fringe by storm may be a bit of an understatement. For about a week, George Brant's play about an American pilot who finds herself sat behind a des…
It's not often you get handed a pair of ear defenders when walking into a rehearsal room; they are ordinarily 'safe' spaces with an air of creative calm, cultivated in order to provide the b…
Although it's a cliche, there's a lot of truth to the old adage that, as Stephen Unwin says in his new book, "Brecht is often sloppily taught". Many teachers of his plays and theories ignore…
Considering the snobbery with which many people and media outlets in England discuss the concept of Scottish independence, it's unsurprising that many of our neighbours in the north are look…
Many interviews begin with a bit of history and finish by looking forward to the future. When chatting to critic Jeremy Kingston, however, we decided to start by looking ahead and work our w…
The subtitle of Nicholas Ridout's Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism and Love, and its central argument " "that theater in modern capitalism can help us think afresh about notions of wo…
About halfway through our conversation, Kieran Hurley tells me a brilliant and quietly moving anecdote about The Bloody Great Border Ballad, a show which Northern Stages ran nightly at its E…
The title of Duska Radosavljević’s Theatre-making would, you’d expect, refer to professionals who actively do the making, creating works of art for others to experience. And …
(2/5) I now properly "get" that word-of-mouth is the most important tool for selling a show in Edinburgh. Though Donal O'Kelly's Brace – Skeffy was awarded a Fringe First last week and…
(3/5) Young women committing acts of violence on small animals seems to have become a bit of a running motif throughout this year's festival. After the grotesque ending of Phoebe Waller-Brid…
(3/5) CONTAINS SPOILERS. After a successful run at last year's festival, Elephant and the Mouse has returned with Repertory Theatre, its bizarre, absurdist Hamlet-inspired two-man farce. It'…
(4/5) I haven't seen anything on the publicity for Tristan Bernays's The Bread and the Beer that suggests this is a piece attempting to understand English identity, but in the context of …
(3/5) London Road is a street in the now-affluent Cape Town suburb of Sea Point. But it wasn’t always that way. It was once seen as a dangerous area due to absent landlords and a high …